Category — Software

Field Day is coming up sooner than we think. So I thought I’d spend some time on Field Day and start working through some of the tasks associated with the event.

Most Field Day operations have more than one station. A conventional way of working each station is to have a “Station Captain” responsible for the setup, tear down and allocation of responsibilities for the station and operators.

What follows is a beginning attempt to establish a “checklist” for station captains.

Station Captain Checklist:

Equipment:

Radio

Antenna Tuner

Morse Key

Microphone

Computer

Field Day software

Computer – Radio Interface

Sound Card Check

Coax

Antenna 1

Antenna 2 (if needed or wanted)

Antenna Supports

Network Router or Hub

Network Cable

Wireless Adapter

Plans:

Setup

Take down

Operator Schedule

Bonus Point attainment plan for station

Food

Cooking

Shelter:

Shelter – tent, RV…??

Sleeping bag or equivalent

Clothes

For cooking

For refrigeration

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What else should be added to this list? What other lists should be here?

Scot, K9JY

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The 4D Ionosphere is something that will give you hours of fun:

Today, NASA-funded researchers released to the general public a new "4D" live model of Earth’s ionosphere. Without leaving home, anyone can fly through the layer of ionized gas that encircles Earth at the edge of space itself. All that’s required is a connection to the Internet.

"This is an exciting development," says solar physicist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. "The ionosphere is important to pilots, ham radio operators, earth scientists and even soldiers. Using this new 4D tool, they can monitor and study the ionosphere as if they’re actually inside it."

When I first read this, I checked to make sure it wasn’t April 1st and some foolery. But, it’s real. Here’s a screen shot:

The key is that this information is updated every 10 minutes:

"Colors represent electron content," Tobiska explains. "Bright red is high density; that’s where radio communications are restricted to few or no frequencies. Blue denotes low density; no problem there."

Using the intuitive Google Earth interface, users can fly above, around and through these regions getting a true 3D view of the situation. Make that 4D. "The fourth dimension is time. This is a real-time system updated every 10 minutes," he says.

Undoubtedly, this technology will be banned from CW contesting as well…

Scot, K9JY

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

There is a (long) conversation going on over at the Contest Reflector about how rules should be constructed around the new CW Skimmer software that recently made its debut for hams. The commentary ranges from letting a single operator use the software to placing that operator into an "assisted" category like packet to banning the software from contesting.

Having these sorts of discussions is a good thing in that it helps contest organizers figure out where all of the passion and objections come from while they design rules around this new technology.

The deal is this: technology will always be ahead of the rules.

Dipoles came before beams and beams came before stacked beams. No filters came before filters on radio and filters came before software DSP. No spots came before 2-meter local spotting and 2-meter local spotting came before packet spotting.

To try and have rules ‘already set up’ ahead of time to accommodate what we think might happen with technology is really a waste of time. We don’t know where technology will take the hobby — one of the things that make ham radio so much fun.

To try and take new technology and shove it into an existing rules category is a useful exercise much of the time. But sometimes something so new comes along that new rules need to be created.

Have at the CW Skimmer discussion with the rules. But let’s not have a heart attack over how it will be treated in the rules. You won’t have anything left over to deal with the next technology change that won’t fit into the rules.

Technology will always trump the existing rules.

Scot, K9JY

There are some stations not sending the signal report as part of the contest exchange in the CQ WW Prefix contest this weekend — just the serial number. Some people aren’t happy about it since sending the signal report is part of the rules.

But, in every contest I’ve been in, the signal report is the same: 59 for SSB Contests and 599 for CW/RTTY Contests. Of course, in the thousands of contacts I’ve made as a contester, there have been a handful of operators who gave something different for the signal report. But only a handful.

In addition, all of the contest logging programs automatically default to the 59/599 signal report for the field in the exchange.

And I haven’t heard of anyone getting disqualified for not providing the signal report; it will be interesting to see if this happens from this contest.

Scot, K9JY