PK-232 – MBX OPERATING MANUAL COMMAND SUMMARY
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Please Note that for U.S. Amateurs, the F.C.C. regulations require Baudot and AMTOR transmis-
sions follow CCIR Recommendations which require the ITA#2 (CODE 0) be used. Technically, it is
illegal to use CODE 1 on the U.S. Amateur bands. MARS operators and Amateurs outside the U.S.
may find CODE 1 useful.
CODE 2: Cyrillic
This code causes a translation to an artificially extended ASCII, so that all received characters are
converted to single ASCII characters. The character set used prior to July 1991 was arbitrary, but
we have now changed the character set to one which we believe to be used presently in the USSR.
The extensions used in Morse reception are shown below:
Morse ASCII English Pronunciation
·-·- $71 q YA
---· $7E ~ CH (Morse only)
··-- $60 ‘ YU
--·- $7D ] SHCH
---- $7B { SH
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-232 displays third-register characters as lower-case alpha-
betic characters, and all FIGS characters 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-I $60 ' YU
3rd-Q $71 q YA
If several words end in "DJ", "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 us-
ing. 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 station must have CODE 2 enabled and of course both must
be running 1991 or later firmware in their PK-232's. Other users will see only upper case charac-
ters and not be aware that anything unusual is happening, as the feature merely inserts NULL
characters at strategic times. An Timewave PK-232 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 effects.
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 charac-
ters in AMTOR should improve message readability when it is translated to Packet and vice versa.
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