Riding the Radio Waves By K4SAC

One of the things I love about ham radio is the depth and breath of the hobby. There are many facets of the hobby, that there should be something for just about any taste. I am going to start taking a look at different modes in the hobby.

If you look, you can find a contest almost every weekend of the year. Some of the contests use digital modes. If you are tired of the traditional CW or SSB or RTTY modes, the digital modes can give you an opportunity to experience a different side of ham radio and contesting. You can also qualify for different awards!

This post is going to focus on a digital mode called Hellschreiber.

Hellschreiber, or Hell, is a method of sending and receiving text using facsimile technology. As the words are decoded, they are not “decoded” in the sense of PSK31 or RTTY, but rather are painted on the screen.

Many people think Hellschreiber is a new mode, born out of the digital era, but in fact Hellschreiber was patented in 1929 by a German engineer named Rudolph Hell.  Landline press machines used Hell up until the 1980′s.

Hell was actually used during the Spanish Civil War(1933) by the Germans and during WWII it was used in portable military installations.

There are several different modes of Hell, but the most popular one is Feld-Hell. Feld-Hell is a single-tone, on-off keyed system with 122.5 dots/second, or about a 35 WPM text rate.  FH has a narrow bandwidth of about 75 Hz.

Screenshot of Feld Hell

Randy K7AGE has a good YouTube video that explains Hellschreiber.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR-EmyEBVqA]

N4QLB posted this YouTube tribute to Rudolph Hell.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD9NHVe8NcU]

So now you are interested in trying out this interesting mode? Well all you need is a pc and a interface to your radio.

There are several places you can purchase an interface for your radio:

• http://home.att.net/~n8st/DDI-index.html (Donner’s Digital Interfaces)
• http://www.packetradio.com/ (Buxxcomm)
• http://www.westmountainradio.com/RIGblaster.htm  (Rigblaster)
• http://dxfile.free.fr/fichiers/n9art.pdf  (How to build your own..PDF format ..Adobe reader required to read)

Digital Interface

As far as software, there are a few different software packages out there that support Hell.

• http://www.mixw.net/  (MixW)
• http://www.ham-radio-deluxe.com/  (Ham Radio Deluxe)
• http://f6cte.free.fr/index_anglais.htm (Multi-PSK)
• http://xoomer.virgilio.it/aporcino/Hell/index.htm (IZ8BLY software)

Feld-Hell is classified as J2B and can be sent over CW or phone frequencies. However there are some “suggested” frequencies to make it easier to find people