What is Amtor ?

General
AMTOR (Amateur Teleprinting Over Radio) is a microprocessor-controlled.
error-correcting data communication mode.
It is derived directly from the commercial mode known as SITOR, (Simplex Telex Over Radio)
which has been used by maritime radiostations for many years,
It was adapted for amateur radio use by G3PLX, Peter Martinez who is also the maker of PSK31.

What equipment is needed ?
Now a days (in 2004) cheap priced modems can be found on the 2nd hand market.
Modems like ICS AMT-1/AMT-2, AEA PK-232, PK-900, KAM Plus, MFJ-1287 are good units.
The German PTC modems also handles Amtor, but they are more expensive.
They all connect to the tranceiver AF in/out/PTT and a seriealport on the computer.
You also need a software/terminalprogram. There are many to be found on the Internet.
Which one to use, depends on the modem brand. See the software section for more info.

AMTOR modes
There are to different modes used in Amtor - FEC and ARQ.

FEC (Forward Error Correction) - Also called Mode B - Listen to Amtor FEC
This mode is used when calling CQ, QRZ or if you are in a QSO with several stations.
In FEC every character is transmitted twice, compared and accepted or rejected.
Accepted character is sent to the screen, rejected character is presented as a dash
or an underscore on the screen.

ARQ (Automatic Repeat Query) - Also called Mode A - Listen to Amtor ARQ
This mode is the primary Amtor mode, and is used for QSOs only.
It can only be used between two stations at the time.
The station sending information (text) sends this in blocks of 3 and 3 characters.
The receiving station checks each block and sends a single charcter back to confirm reception
The sending station retransmit the block if checksum failed.
Text will only apear on receivers screen when checksum has passed at the other end.
Likewise characters will only be presented as echoed text at sender when received
checksum has been accepted.

Where are Amtor stations found ?
In Europe the bussiest frequency is 7037,0 kHz. (Display freq. on FSK/RTTY mode)
Try also 7036 or 7038. Other frequencies are: 3585, 10130 and 14075 kHz.

Active Amtor stations
The following stations are known to be active on Amtor:

DK5TM, Horst
DL1EJL, Helmut
DL2WP, Klaus
EI5DS, Ned
EI9FV, Gerry
G3GGO, Neville
G3ISD, Ted
G3MUL, Colin
G3PLX, Peter
G4LWP, Chris
G4NYE, Gerry
GW4SLS, Frank
LA5ZO, Geir
OZ1PMX, Peter

For updates, send an e-mail to: la5zo@agderpost.com