Steve,
No offense, but I think you're painting a rather grim picture. Though
its true that computers can do what humans can do, it's not always
true that they can do it better.
For instance, it's faster to remember who you've already worked when
S&P up the band than to type each call in manually for the computer to
dupecheck. It's faster to know your relative beamwidth and turn the
beam only when necessary than to have the computer slaved to the rotor
and turn it all the time, and it's certainly faster than having to
verify the heading then turn the beam yourself. I don't know if you've
ever used a CW decoder, but it's much faster to copy in your head than
to depend on hardware.
The equipment has gotten better, I'll grant you. Today's computers can
handle SO2R switching, grayline mapping, CW/Voice/RTTY keying, rig
control, rotor control if you want it, and tons of other features
while primitive loggers were little more than dupecheckers. Solid
state rigs have almost universally replaced hybrid and all-tube
transceivers. Autotune amps certainly make for faster QSYs.
New skills certainly have their place, but I think you'll find that
new hams with tons of computer and keyboarding knowledge are not about
to replace the all-star ops of today. WRTC in Brazil had to search out
a youth team for a reason--the same people who were competitive in and
winning contests in the 1970's and 1980's are for the most part, still
winning contests today. Some of them have picked up new skills like
typing, programming, and networking, but I think that most of them
would still be very competitive if everybody was logging on paper,
sending by hand, and tuning their rigs and amps with every band
change.
I agree with you that the CW Skimmer will require a shift in how CW
contesting is defined, but I think the rules of the major DX and
domestic contests can be worded to allow for constructive use of it as
a tool while maintaining the spirit of the existing categories. W4PA
has already pointed out that the CQWW rules as they are worded today
don't allow the use of something like CW Skimmer for single-ops.
I see change on the horizon, but I'll reserve judgment on how
destructive that change will be for the time being.
73,
Chris WF3C
**K0SR Wrote**
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:55:21 +0000
From: steve.root@culligan4water.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Dead horse
To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Message-ID: <W344631657079071205434521@webmail25>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Skimmer is just part of a decades long trend in contesting: the
replacement of human skills with hardware. There used to be
a necessarty set of skills that all serious big time contesters had to
master. Those skills are basically
obsolete and have been replaced by hardware and software:
Remembering who you've already worked? Ask your computer.
Send flawless CW every time? Computer does that.
Remember Suffixes, locations, zones, checks? That's all stored in a
file on the computer.
Remember beam headings, SS/SR times? Ask the software.
Send CW with a pencil in your hand? Pencil???
Tune up your rig and amp? They do that for you automatically.
Hear weak signals in the crud? Turn on the roofing filters, DSP,
Shift, notch, width etc.
Old skills have been replaced by new ones,like typing and
PC/Networking Knowledge. The only thing constant
about this hobby is that it's always changing, and now it looks like
it's going to change again. We're about to
witness the emergence of a new creature, what WB0HCH has coined the
"Software Defined Operator"
The idea of a machine copying code for me is an affront to everthing
I've tried to achieve as a CW operator.
But now that Skimmer is loose on the World it's time to evolve, adapt,
or perish.
73 Steve K0SR
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