Today I met 163TM088 IRL for the first time, having chatted on air and on here.
He helped me get my rod up a few extra feet on a steel pole (as you can see I already have good altitude!). It made a hell of a difference on rx, and we now have what seems to be a very reliable groundwave link between our QTHs.
I also made him a simple digital interface to connect his Icom to his PC (tx audio, rx audio, PTT). Amazingly it worked when he got it home (no Icom here to test), and we've spent the last hour playing with digital modes in MixW with great success. 100% copy in QPSK31 mode and great fun playing with SSTV.
Over the next few days I'll try to do a short article on a simple digital interface people could homebrew that would attach to any standard 4-pin mic socket (or 6-pin for us df owners). Would be great to see some TMs get in on the digital mode action. If you can read this you probably already have all the gear you need to chat in realtime over your radio (similar to MSN) and transfer images using SSTV, even if you're blessed with a Stalker ST-9F DX
