On 3/14/2020 6:41 AM, Paul O'Kane wrote:
"The newer digital modes are semi- or fully-automated
machine-to-machine modes - my computer processing your computer's
data, and vice-versa. There's clearly as a place for them, but please
don't refer to them as ham radio. FTx takes the ham out of ham radio."
Except that fundamentally FTx is simply an encode/decode system. It
doesn't have to be semi-automated or fully automated, and modern signal
chains aren't human recognizable anyway. When operating CW or SSB with
any radio built in the last couple of decades the incoming signal is
sliced and diced, digitally analyzed, digitally processed with various
algorythms (filters, noise reduction, etc), and then digitally restored
to analog. That digital processing improves SNR to allow better
readability of signals. FTx simply an extension of that process .... it
just pre-encodes the signal at the transmit end for more effective
decode processing at the receiving end. I could literally create a
tunable narrow band (essentially single signal) version of FTx that has
the same superior SNR performance of FTx, except that it translated the
received text to audible CW instead of printing it to the screen. The
only difference between that and normal CW in a contest (which is
already almost always sent via macros) is that there would be a few
seconds delay (probably less than 5) on the receiving end, the CW would
be at whatever speed the receiver wanted it to be, the SNR capability
would be about 10 db better than normal CW, and the CW would be QRM
free. To be clear, the digital frame wouldn't even have to be locked to
a clock cycle ... it could be asynchronous. FTx as a mode by itself is
simply modern signal processing.
"Unlike the FTx machine-to machine modes, all forms of phone are
person-to-person - individuals communicating with one another. "
RTTY is also essentially machine-to-machine with visual text, and FTx
could have been designed almost exactly like RTTY except with much
better SNR and much better utilization of bandwidth. Maybe you have a
gripe against RTTY too, but it is hugely popular for contesting. FTx
created a whole new ballgame for DXing and general contacts, but some of
the features of WSJT-X made it a bit clumsy for contesting and took away
some of the ability for skill to be a differentiator. That could be
addressed.
73,
Dave AB7E
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|