The discussion on robot stations has been somewhat interesting, esp.
since I have often thought about how I would actually do this myself.
How would a "little pistol" robot differ from a "big gun" robot station?
Well, if it QSYs beyond our privilages the FCC would not make much of a
differentation as it pulls our licence and gives us one of those new
high priced fines we read about. If I get "too close" to the edge of the
band, there is always someone out there listening and willing to let me
know - how do we program this into the robot, that is, an unsigned QSO
from someone who says they are watching us?
Indeed, how many of us realize that the software needed for a robot station
requires some REAL-TIME programming ability which is HARDWARE dependant?
And then, we would all begin to look at the schematic for our rigs to
determine the Nyquist frequency for all the computer controlled circuits
to by=pass all the rulest for multiple transmitters. With a few minor
changes, we could multiplex both S&P and CQing within band and across
the bands depending on the "rules". Before long the software would begin
to incorporate NEURAL NETWORKS to become better operators, and incorporate
propagation software to develop an operational plan, etc. ,etc...
I think most of us would be happy enough with some robot software that
would get the XYL off our back, and take over at meal times and other
breaks such as picking the children up at the movies when the XYL is
doing something "important" and the QSOs are moving along. No, I think
robot software will have a lot of diversity, a lot of "risk", and will
be of interest to everyone. Will it make a difference? Well, is anyone
willing to claim that they have actually WON any contest due to their
LOGGING software? Will anyone say they would not have come in dead last
if they had used a specific logging method? It's an aid, and the robots
would be also. Does anyone care to disclose what specific PROGRAMMING
language they use for any existing robot software. or is this all a lot
of idle speculation?
73 de N2ALE/6, alan
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