>
> I was seriously contemplating not dipping my paddle into this pond of
> abject
> silliness, but these words from K1TTT: "knowing when and how to use
> current
> technology always makes you a BETTER operator............." finally shoved
> me out of the boat.
>
> Self-serving statements like the above abound. That's the great thing
> about
> being a democracy and freedom of speech. Some possess unlimited ability
> to
> trivialize amateur radio operator skills in general, and contesting,
> specifically. Because you can hook up a computer, does that somehow
> demonstrate some skill in communicating? or ability to copy CW? or a
> learned
> understanding of propagation? or which mult you can move where/when? For
> me, no. For K1TTT and his Skilled Technology Operators, undoubtedly,
> yes.
Well, let see... operators that come here don't have to hook up computers,
that is already done for them. They do have to know how to copy cw, unless
they want to use cw skimmer that is installed on each of the stations... but
I am one of the few who does that I think. They do have to understand
propagation, the skimmer and cluster networks make that a necessity,
otherwise they would end up tuning for spots that are unworkable. And of
course, the skimmer and cluster can't tell them where to move other
stations, that has to be learned based on propagation and the station
capabilities.
What we DO get from the skimmer is a better picture of world wide
propagation. Using the local skimmer we can also find stations that haven't
been spotted by the traditional spotting system, but who can be heard here.
Using the world wide network we can also get early notice of who is on what
frequency before the bands open so we can either stay off them or listen for
them to tell when the bands are starting to open.
Obviously it takes more skill to use the spot than to not use the spots and
only listen to your own receiver. So definitely I would call my operators
more skillful than those who don't have to process all that extraneous
information and just listen to a single vfo at a time.
David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net
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