Timewave PK-900, Operating Manual

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In Baudot and AMTOR, Russian transmitters use a third register to transmit
Cyrillic characters in addition to the LTRS and FIGS. They use LTRS to transmit
the Roman alphabet. As LTRS and FIGS characters are used to access the first
and second registers, they use the BLK or NUL character (00) to access the third
register. The PK-900 displays third-register characters as lower case
alphabetic characters, and all FIGS characters as in CODE 0 with the following
exceptions:
Character CODE 2 English pronunciation
FIGS-F $7C | E
FIGS-G $7B { SH
FIGS-H $7D } SHCH
FIGS-J $60 ' YU
3rd-Q $71 q YA
If several words end in "OJ", "OW" or "OGO" the transmission is probably Russian.
There is no separate Baudot combination for the CH character. The Russians use
a "4" because the Cyrillic character for CH resembles a "4".
It is safe to leave CODE set to 2 if you are not sure which alphabet the
transmitting station is using. You will be able to see the message in either
alphabet with minimal garbling, and you can then set CODE to either 0 or 3.
Another interesting side effect of being able to send and receive in CODE 2 is
that it is now possible to send and receive both upper and lower case text in
Baudot and AMTOR modes. To do this, both stations must have CODE 2 enabled
and of course both must be running 1992 or later firmware in their PK-900's.
Other users will see only upper case characters and not be aware that anything
unusual is happening, as the feature merely inserts NULL characters at strate-
gic times. An AEA PK-900 using CODE 2 in QSO with a unit in CODE 0 (or any
other equipment) will exchange data in upper case only, with no adverse ef-
fects.
This feature may be advantageous to users of the AMTOR MailDrop who want their
messages to be forwarded to the packet network. The ability to send and receive
upper and lower case characters in AMTOR should improve message readability when
it is translated to Packet and vice versa.
CODE 3: Transliterated Cyrillic
This code is similar to CODE 2, except that some characters are transliterated
into English phonetic equivalents for easier reading.
CODE 2 CODE 3
w V
v ZH
h KH
c TS
~ CH (Morse only)
{ SH
] SHCH
x '
| E (RTTY only)
' YU
q YA
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