General Questions
Why Does This Exist?
I needed a place to practice CW with actual human beings, and I wanted it to be as close as possible to what I'd experience on a radio. I also didn't have a lot of money to spend on equipment, but I did have a computer, phone, and gamepad. At the time I wrote it, there was nothing else like it on the Internet. Now there is VBand, which is very good, and you should check it out too.
Do I need to be an amateur (ham) radio operator?
Absolutely not! I made Vail to help people learn and practice Morse Code, not amateur radio. While there are a lot of amateur radio people interested in Vail, there are a few who don't own any radio equipment at all (like the author)!
You may encounter people using morse code jargon and abbreviations. You are absolutely not required to use these if you don't want to, but they will make communications easier and faster if you learn them.
Why do I hear a low tone?
This is the "drop tone", and will be accompanied by an error.
This means the packet arrived so late, the time when it needed to be played has already passed. We can't go back in time to play it, so we play the drop tone to let you know things didn't work out.
This could be happening for three reasons:
- You (the person hearing the drop tone) need a larger receive delay
- The receiving computer's clock is in the future (running fast)
- The sending computer's clock is in the past (running slow)
Vail attempts to correct for clock differences, but making sure your computer has correct time, down to the millisecond, can help with reliability. Running an NTP (Network Time Protocol) client can help a lot.
Repeaters
How many Vail Repeaters / Channels are there?
There are an infinite number of Vail repeaters.
Any string you can enter into the repeater name field will move you to a new repeater named that. So while "General", "Channel 1", "Channel 2", and "Channel 3" are the default options in the sidebar menu, you could, if you wanted, connect to "Channel 58 and also there are finches on my clothesline", which would be a different repeater than "Channel 58 and also there are penguins on my porch".
If you want, you could send your pals a link to https://vail.woozle.org/#My%20Very%20Own%20Repeater and be fairly confident that no passersby would accidentally stumble across your conversation. Well, you could be confident until I posted it here in this wiki. But you can make a new repeater name that's more or less private to you.
Is it possible to create a private repeater for my friends?
Absolutely. Just have everybody connect to a repeater with a name that other folks are unlikely to guess.
What does "local" mean next to the repeater name?
It means this repeater doesn't repeat anything: nothing you key in will be sent anywhere. These are to help people practice and learn, without worrying about anyone else hearing them fumble around.
Project Questions
How can I help?
- Improve the source code
- Help me with this wiki
- Hang out on Discord and help new users
- Email me and let me know you're using it
- Vail costs me 50¢ a year to run: you could buy me a cup of coffee every 5 years or so to offset the expense
Who are you?
Neale Pickett - kd7oqi
You can look my name up in a search engine and find a bunch of stuff about me.