> So my question is " What does The League think of HSMS and WSJT,
> where the same general situation is taking place." I am hearing that
> people do not even want to run SSB skeds anymore. That's fine, but will
> there be any question about these QSOs from the ARRL who just so happen,
> process all the logs?
Interesting question. When was the ruling on the eme QSO made?
I guess instead of asking what the ARRL thinks (which is better
answered by making a phone call), I would be interested in knowing
what other VHF contesters think. I have a pretty solid calibration
on what is desirable for HF contests, but I admit that there are
some differences in the VHF/UHF world. I don't see anything wrong
with that - and making "one size fits all" could be a mistake.
At a basic level - having the human ear used for detection of
the signals makes sense. The day might be coming where technology
could replace the human ear with enough performance to make the
human detection method non competitive... I for one would not
welcome that day as I think it would remove most of the fun and
make the results less dependent on operator skill, but rather
how well you can program your DSP. I feel the basic thing that
makes ham radio interesting compared to just sending e-mail is
putting on your headphones and listening.
It would appear that the ARRL ruling on the eme QSO agrees with
this viewpoint. So did Ellie Arroway in Contact.
HSCW is a very interesting case... because you are using your
ears. This is a slight variation on the "backcopy" feature that
some voice memory keyers have... the ability to do an instant
replay. WSJT takes this a step furthur and couples the strip
chart display with possible auto CW detection.
Some of the HF contests have a rule in them that says something
like "information must be decoded in real time by a human".
Without this, CW contests could turn into RTTY contests, which are
a lot different in nature and many people wouldn't not find them
as much fun.
So - what is the opinion of the VHF/UHF community? I am not trying
to say developing these tools shouldn't be done. Just trying to
understand if we want to use them in contests. We could hit
golf balls a lot furthur if we could use more technology - but
would anyone be interested?
Tree N6TR / K7RAT
tree@kkn.net
|