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IVCA Vision News No. 9
      IVCA  VISION NEWS LETTER No.9  Dec 28=2001
                            THE INTERNATIONAL VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION
            Keeping  Amateurs  informed on Developments in Visual Communication around the world
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   IVCA  General Information
The IVCA is a non profit organization operated by volunteer members that provide the various functions and services. The following is a list of the current board members and Net operators.
      Dayton Coordinator...............Don Miller  W9NTP.                              Treasurer...................James Gaither Jr.  W4CR
      IVCA Web Page...................Doug Alspaugh K3DUG                         IVCA Reflector............Dave Jones  KB4YZ
      VISION News e-mail .............Ramon Glidden W5NOO                       IVCA Director.............Ramon Glidden W5NOO
   IVCA Saturday 14.230 MHz  SSTV net operators.
 Charles B. Grant.......K4ZET               Clarence H. Fowler....... WA0TSL             Michael L. Pratt.............AB4DE 
 Ray  Glidden...........W5NOO              Doug  Alspaugh...........  K3DUG               Thomas Hamilton.......... KA4P

      Membership and Dues
As we are no longer providing a printed VISION News letter,only this e-mail version. We have reduced operating expenses, we do however request members to provide the membership dues to the treasurer  James Gaither W4CR to help cover the Dayton Ohio meetings and other operation expenses.  Contact James W4CR at   w4cr@cs.com
       Get on the IVCA Yahoo reflector! (Just to remind new viewers)
Any one that would like to receive and exchange e-mail information with the IVCA members can do this by going to the Yahoo group page ,i.e. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ivca  and on the right side of the page click the "Join this group"  and fill in the details. The Yahoo IVCA reflector let's you receive all the mail that members are sending and you can also send mail to them at
ivca@yahoogroups.com  This is a free service that members can take advantage of for information exchange. It also permits file attachments with size limits.

      Large Video Display
We all know displays are getting brighter, sharper , larger and cheaper all the time but have you seen the one the German computer club "CCC" has that uses the lighted windows of an office building to display moving graphic pictures and messages, that can be controlled with a Cell Phone. Check it out at http://www.blinkenlights.de/  If it's still up! ( They also have live web cams) Now that's what we call a big dot pitch pixel display!  ( What next, more pixels and with color?)

     Prices are Still Falling on Computer Hardware
 If you are using a old slow computer and small monitor etc. I find when we go from a 15 Inch CRT monitor to even a 17 inch there is an amazing improvement and the screen is very much easier to view and read. and the newer computers are all cheaper and Win XP compatible and almost crash proof. As an example you can pick up a 19 inch  monitor at the Tiger Direct web site at http://www.tigerdirect.com   for as little as $159.00 .US (a good place to check and compare  prices on various hardware etc.) It's also a good time to add computer memory as it is only a fraction of it's previous price. The proceeding applies in this slow US economy only if your still gainfully employed!!

     SSTV & Digital Audio  The Almost Best Kept Secretes in Amateur Radio   
There has been very little written to date on SSTV and it has not been easy to get any thing published in the Amateur Journals. I now find it is starting to get easier.With the web any one can publish and every one reads. Even the editor of QST magazine has written some good recent articles. The ARRL/QST is posting articles on the web in the Adobe PDF format that permits simple color printing on any computer system. Even my old QST article of Sept 1997 "Getting Started in SSTV" is available in PDF format. (The PDF reader is available free even for WinXP operating system at the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com   (with the free PDF reader installed when you click a PDF link it displays.)  After you have installed the PDF reader be sure to check the ARRL web site on Digital Voice/Video transmission and scroll down and play the sample digital audio files etc. at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/digivoice.html  You will find that Digital Audio was developed during World War 2 for secure voice communications but may soon find some new applications.

    Digital Encryption and Copy Protection? (just a little hacker information)
To prevent the copying of music CD's and making  them available on the web with the Napster type program or any of the various Peer to Peer file transfer programs, a large music company "Universal" has used copy protection on their new music CD "Fast & Furious" It was quickly discovered that with the "CloneCD" or the "CDex" program (you can locate with a search engine and download them) then the  "Cactus Data Shield" copy protection can be removed and the music ripped or recorded.  The original CD did not even run on a Linux or a Mac computer before and had to even use it's special player to run on a Windows system!) Note: I have found Fast & Furious music is posted at numerous locations available on the web for download! (Oh well back to the drawing board.) Note: The cost of Music CD's is droping fast some for less than $5.00 available now.
 (The main function of copy protection for E-Books,WinXP etc. it seems is just to challenge the dedicated hackers!)

    What is the Best SSTV System? (easy question difficult answer)
 Of the numerous e-mails we have received from folks wishing to start operating with SSTV, the most frequent question is "What is the best SSTV system or software. As we now have an increasing number of hardware and software programs and more arriving almost daily along with upgrades. I'm not able to give a simple answer. As several considerations must be made including  price and functions or features etc. I have personally had experience with only fifteen of the various software  DOS and Windows programs and several stand alone hardware systems.I do find they all run and are all fun to operate. In general the newer software sound card programs have more features and I find are easier to configure. I usually suggest the new operator try several programs as we still have individual personal preferences to consider.  (I would like to congratulate all the Designers and Programmer's for their efforts to improve and make  SSTV systems easier and more fun.) But what do I know? Ray W5NOO

    Computer Tips
I have found several free programs to diagnose or help keep my IBM computer running. One program is the "Belarc Advisor" that will give all the information on your installed hardware and software, you can locate it with the Google search engine (available at http://www.google.com)  it's listed by TechTV, and down load it. One more good free program to view and test your hardware setup is by the SiSoft Co. called "Sandra" it can be also located with a Google.search. A third free  program that can be installed in windows 98 and used similar to "Go Back" program is available and called "System Safe Gold" that keeps your windows operation files history so if they get damaged you can go to a previous copy. It also can be found with a Google search for "System Safe Gold"  

           Happy New Year and  Happy Viewing         73  Ray Glidden W5NOO  Editor/Director IVCA  

 

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