>
> A few people have suggested a delay BUT I would hate to see this
> implemented just to manage a problem of a few people who use real-time
> access to an SDR to 'cheat' at amateur radio award chasing.
I think you could go a long way to solving the problem of cheating if you
implemented a frequency-aware conditional delay.
If the receiver spends more than 30 seconds or 1 minute in the 1800-1850kHz,
3500-3530kHz or 3750-3800kHz amateur segments without being moved more than
30kHz, the delay could kick in. Maybe you need it on the "DX" portions of
the higher bands, or maybe even in all the ham bands, but I sort of doubt
it. Because of the way propagation works, it would be a lot harder to put a
readable signal into Europe on 20m and still consider it worth it to use a
remote SDR to hear people calling you back.
Outside of a few specified sub-segments of a few amateur bands, there
doesn't have to be a delay. There's no need for a delay outside the ham
bands. There's no need for a delay when the frequency slew rate and tuning
pattern is consistent with tuning around the band to see what's out there.
A delay will kick in for people who want to stop tuning and just sit and
listen to some transmission, but if you want to listen to a long
transmission, a delay isn't a problem. When it kicks in you hear the last
fifteen seconds AGAIN and then you're up to speed. No big deal. Once you
start tuning around far enough, you end up missing fifteen seconds as the
system skips back into "real time" mode, but that seems like a minimal
issue.
A system with fairly simple rules to tell the difference "amateur radio
cheating" behavior and proper SWL use could go a long time toward minimizing
cheating while keeping the system nice and responsive for ethical
users. Such a system will not be perfect, but I suspect those who want to
use your system to listen to the ham bands ethically would understand and
accept that you need to have it be a little quirky/laggy on the
awards-chasing portions of the low bands.
I understand that there's a tense balance between providing a high quality
remote-controlled SDR experience to your users
and inadvertently facilitating cheaters. But the fact is, cheaters are
going to gravitate toward ham-band web receivers without delays. Hard to
keep them out.
The development of some kind of system like this would be a lot more
complicated than just putting in a simple delay on all outgoing audio
streams, but maybe it's the ticket to making your system "taste bad" to
cheaters.
73
Dan
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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