[600MRG] THOR5 QSO

[John Andrews]

Thanks to Eric for the 42 minute chat last night. The THOR11 mode is 
certainly a lot faster than THOR 5, but both worked out well. There's a 
"feeding the pig" aspect to keyboard QSO's: the faster the throughput, 
the tougher it is to stay ahead of the buffer. Part of the trick is to 
start entering text while the other guy is transmitting. Of course, it's 
tough to give a "solid copy" report before all of the copy has come in...

The forward error correction in THOR (or DominoEX, if FEC is on) makes 
it a really nice QSO mode at these frequencies. 200 Hz BW is 
substantial, but better than some of the alternatives. FYI - I've come 
to prefer the decoders in FLDIGI to MultiPSK. Probably not a big 
difference, but FLDIGI seems to provide the cleanest copy.

Of course, Eric's much nicer antenna system helps the copy, too!

John, W1TAG / WE2XGR/3