ESTO ESTA AQUI PENDIENTE DE TRADUCCION..PERO SI SABES INGLES PUEDES IR TOMANDO NOTA...

(sera traducido en breve)

Have you ever wished you could see what the person on the other end of a QSO looked like?

I have put together a collection of utilities that makes it possible to send a postage-stamp sized color photograph of yourself, during a PSK31 QSO, to the person on the other end, in about 8 minutes. In the same time, you can also send a card, such as my PSK31 QSL card shown here, in larger size, but using only 16 colors. The communication path must be perfect for this to happen, but this is very often the case with PSK31! The technique is simply to encode pictures as text, transmit the text by PSK31, and then decode the text back into a picture at the other end. I will use my call, KH6TY, for the following example, which assumes the operating system is Windows 95 or 98. Just replace KH6TY with your own call.

Getting the necessary freeware utilities

1. Download and install the picture viewing and editing utility, IrfanView32.
2. Download the encoding utility, BIXHEX.EXE.
3. Download and install the decoding utility, Decode Shell Extension.

Preparing a picture for sending

1. Extract (crop) and save a 60x80 pixel image (4800 pixels) from a larger .JPG picture file using IrFanview.
2. Using BIXHEX.EXE, encode the picture, which will automatically create a file titled KH6TY.HQX.
3. Save KH6TY.HQX in your PSK31 "send" folder. This needs to be done only once per picture.

Transmitting the encoded picture file

1. Instruct the receiving station to open a log file called "KH6TY.TXT".
2. When the receiving station is ready, transmit DE KH6TY followed by a carriage return (this is very important), and send the file, KH6TY.HQX.
3. At the end of the picture transmission, transmit END DE KH6TY.

Receiving the picture

1. When the receiving station sees END DE KH6TY, he closes the receive log.
2. The receiving station then goes to the PSK31 log folder, right-clicks on KH6TY.TXT, and decodes KH6TY.TXT into KH6TY.JPG.
3. To view the picture, he simply double-clicks on KH6TY.JPG.

Tips

• Put a shortcut to the PSK31 log folder on the Windows Start menu. This will give you easy access to all the picture files with all the functions of Windows Explorer. An easy way to do this is just to hold down the left mouse button, "drag" the folder onto the Start button, and release the mouse button.
• If you send the same picture most of the time, prepare the picture by editing the picture file to add DE KH6TY and a carriage return to the beginning of the picture file. The carriage return will help to isolate the picture file from any garbage characters already accumulating in the log file of the receiving station before the picture is sent. It is also helpful to add END DE KH6TY to the end of the picture file, so sending your station identification is not forgotten and does not have to typed every time.
• If you are sending a picture of yourself, use a close-up image for the best likeness of yourself in postage-stamp size. If you crop out a picture from a digitized photograph that is about 640x480 pixels in size and the width of that picture section is about 1/10 of the original picture width, you will be able to use it without resizing, and it will be as sharp as the original. Try to use as few colors as possible and keep the image file size under 1.3K.
• There is a neat $15 shareware utility, Explorer Extensions, that can encode a picture directly into a text file(.txt) and will decode it back into a picture, with nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse button.
• If you want to experiment with sending pictures without having to create one, just right-click on any image on this page, save it to disk, encode the picture, and try sending it. All these images are under, or around, 1.3K in size and will transmit in about 8 minutes, leaving plenty of time for station identification before and after picture transmission.

Troubleshooting

• If KH6TY.TXT will not decode, double-click on KH6TY.TXT, or otherwise edit the file using Notepad, and be sure the very first line reads "(This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0)". If there are any characters in front of the first parenthesis, on the same line, delete them and save the file.
• Each row of KH6TY.TXT, except the first and last rows, should be exactly 64 characters long. If there was any garbling or error during receiving, the picture will arrive damaged, and must be sent and received all over again. Unless it appears that 100% print will be possible for 8 minutes, sending and receiving an error-free picture will not be possible.
• FCC regulations require the transmitting station to identify itself at least every 10 minutes. For this reason, sending pictures by PSK31 using this technique is limited to color pictures of approximately 4800 total pixels (60x80, 80x60, or 70x70) in size. In most cases, you will just want to exchange a picture of yourself with the receiving operator, so it is easy to prepare a picture and time how long it takes to transmit the encoded text file, using a dummy load, or with the transceiver turned off..

I would be interested in hearing about your experiences with sending a picture by PSK31. Any suggestions about improving or speeding up the process of sending pictures by PSK31 would be gratefully appreciated. E-mail KH6TY. Have fun!

73, Skip, KH6TY