Category — Digital Modes

A petition is now out on the Internet that requests banning the CW Skimmer program and Related Enhancements for CW contests in any operating category.

The petition says, in part:

We love CW Contesting because it is CW Contesting. CW Contesting is enjoyed by Amateur Radio Operators worldwide who use their skills and stations to compete with other stations and the other stations’ operator(s) skills.

Although certain technological advancements have been developed and generally accepted by the contest community, Skimmer technology is one we feel should be banned from use in CW Contesting in all categories.

Banning new technology for all categories is drastic, to say the least. And requested before there is any real data out on how contesters would use the program in a real contest and describe what would help or hurt them about the program.

I don’t disagree the technology should be available in all contesting categories, but banning the technology from any contesting category flies in the face of human behavior.

Banning the program from use sounds easy, but fails a key contest criteria: there is no reliable metric that tells us whether the program is used by an operator or not. Without the capacity to log check and know, the program will be used, or not, by the operator. Allowing the program in one/some categories would provide the operator a clear category to use the program in the contest.

Instead of petitions recommending banning the program from contesting, I think it would be much smarter to use the program in some contests. Let’s figure out how it changes the operator behavior and then work on putting the technology in the right category for the operator.

Also, KA3DRR’s article on this.

Scot, K9JY

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From the ARRL Web site:

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today released its decision on the ARRL’s Petition for Review of the FCC’s Orders adopting rules governing broadband over power line (BPL) systems. The Court agreed with the ARRL on two major points and remanded the rules to the Commission.

The full story from the ARRL.

This is good news because the FCC ignored ham radio arguments and went with what power companies wanted to do regardless of the impact on services to others. Then the FCC didn’t allow anyone else to see the studies upon which they made the decision.

So we will ignore the will of the people, do what companies want, keep the studies secret that we used to make the decision, and implement it over your objections.

That approach sounds so familiar to me….hmmmm.

At least the Appeals Court can see this logic and send it back.

Scot, K9JY

I read a blog post the other day from February (sorry, I don’t remember which post!) that marked the one year anniversary of the no-code license. While much has been talked about with no-code both good and bad, while reading that particular article I finally had a Blinding Flash of the Obvious:

The real issue isn’t code or no-code, the real issue is how adaptable is the amateur radio service to change?

Humans are tremendously adaptable. Companies are adaptable. Organizations are adaptable.

How’s our ham radio service doing on the adaptability scale?

I originally thought that radio doesn’t adapt well or that quickly. But, after thinking about that a bit, I think that’s incorrect. Radio is adopting to change very quickly. Just think about some of the changes over the last few years:

• Computers are now hooked to virtually all ham shacks
• Software for use with radio has significantly increased
• Contesting methods, education, software and participation have significantly changed
• DXpeditions have become significantly better in terms of operators, logistics, logging, publishing logs
• LoTW has moved to electronic confirmation of contacts
• Global QSL has provided a service for DX bureau cards
• Ham radio presence on the web has increased significantly
• Digital modes have significantly increased in number and participation

Is everything wonderful? Nope. Rules, necessarily because of FCC involvement, take time. Clubs come and go, depending upon the club leadership and the club mission. Debates about a particular segment of the hobby (e.g., no-code licenses) can degrade into pet peeves instead of being about the overall hobby. DX cops still think they can direct traffic for DXpeditions, while simply fulfilling their need to be shouted upon.

That’s going to happen.

But if you look under the hood, the hobby is significantly different than it was ten, even five, years ago.

Adaptability to change is critical to keeping the hobby — or any organization — at the forefront. How do you think we’re doing?

Scot, K9JY

While away in Ireland, a technology busting new program from the makers of DX Atlas showed up on the scene, creating responses of reluctant acceptance, to ham-bashing, to declarations that CW skills will no longer be required.

Well, facts first.

CW Skimmer is a "multi-channel CW decoder and analyzer." Think of it as your PSK waterfall screen for CW. It’s not the first CW decoder out there on the market; WriteLog has had a CW decoder for as long as I remember having the program, pulling out callsigns from the ether through your receiver’s passband.

But CW Skimmer is a bit like WriteLog’s CW decoder on steroids. Features, from the web site:

• a very sensitive CW decoding algorithm based on the methods of Bayesian statistics;
• simultaneous decoding of ALL CW signals in the receiver passband - up to 700 signals can be decoded in parallel on a 3-GHz P4 if a wideband receiver is used;
• a fast waterfall display, with a resolution sufficient for reading Morse Code dots and dashes visually;
• the callsigns are extracted from the decoded messages, and the traces on the waterfall are labeled with stations’ callsigns;
• a DSP processor with a noise blanker, AGC, and a sharp, variable-bandwidth CW filter

And a picture is worth a thousand words; this from a 3-kHz mode:

This is a pretty interesting program. Others have noted that, especially in the wideband mode, DXpeditions would have an easier time pulling out callsigns and contesters would too.

Detractors lament the lack of skill needed in this endeavor for copying CW, but I don’t agree with that position. The mind is a great filter and I’ve done enough RTTY contesting — where the machine decodes everything — to know that what is copied by a machine isn’t necessarily the right thing copied by a machine. The operator still counts.

Yes, it could make CW different, just like calculators made doing long division different.

I think this sort of stuff is great for the hobby — it shows that we continue to embrace technology for communicating through radio waves. It will be interesting to see where this program takes the hobby.

I know I, for one, certainly don’t miss paper logs and dupe sheets…

Other reviews:

• K4SAC: CW Skimmer Vs. Contesting
• N4ZR: What’s Next
• CW Skimmer on 144 MHz receiving beacons (You Tube)
• KR2Q: THIS is the big deal about CW Skimmer
• NS3T’s Radio Sport: CW Skimmer Software Faces Questions on Use by Contesters
• KB6NU: This Changes Everything?

Scot, K9JY

Ward Silver, N0AX, in the Contester’s Rate Sheet, offered up a pretty good point on what we are doing in the hobby:

What I’ve found is that the longer a ham has been licensed, the FEWER different aspects of ham radio they are likely to use. We are creatures of habit and once formed, we tend to pertinaciously follow those habits, frequently becoming incredibly deep experts to be sure, growing narrower, relatively speaking. It is rare individual that can lay claim to being a Renaissance Ham.

As we develop and hone our expertise, we may also find that we have explored much of what there is to explore in our chosen niches. Our hamming begins to become permeated with a sameness that leads to a quietus of “been there, done that”. Does this stoic inertia sound familiar?

Indeed, it does. One of the great aspects of this hobby is the tremendous diversity of subjects that can be learned, practiced, and shared within the hobby itself.

I’ve always made it a consistent action on my part that when I move, I try to do one new thing in the hobby that I haven’t done before. This has resulted in rag chewing, DXing, contesting from home, packet radio and DX spotting, multi-contesting, and DXpeditioning.

But this move to this house has resulting in not doing something new in the hobby. And part of what that has meant is that I don’t have a station up and working right now — any antenna would have half its signal hit the earth, so why is it worth it?

Well, it is. I chose to live in this house for very good reasons, completely understanding the challenge of ham radio from this location (both the house and the Pacific Northwest).

So in a couple of weeks after Kate and I return from EI-land, I’m going to figure out how to get a station up on the air. I haven’t done much with PSK or the other exotic digital modes and, given my half-earth ground plane, I think a concentrated signal would help a lot.

I’m not going to with the ARRL CW contest from home — that much is for sure.

But there is more to the hobby than each of our cherished portions of ham radio.

Time to do a bit of exploring.

Scot, K9JY