Both sound interesting for their size, especially for outings I enjoy like Field Day, the Flight of the Bumblebees, or a county expedition in a QSO party, although contest software for either of them
Hi, Pete. I'm not really knowledgeable on software-defined radio, but I think you can accomplish the same thing quite cheaply (less than $30 or so?) with an SDR front end like the Softrock and the fr
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing general wideband recordings of contest or DXpedition activity made freely available, if for no other reason than as a possible deterrent against some of the really
You wrote this tongue in cheek, right? Because otherwise, this is a good example of the kind of thing that in industry gives engineers a bad reputation for wasting a lot of effort creating complexity
Theoretically speaking, the probability that anybody would be running EXACTLY 150 watts ... or be able to measure it perfectly so as to know they were running exactly 150 watts even if they were ...
For operation within the U.S. it seems to me that there are only two sets of rules that are relevant here ... the WPX rules and the FCC regulations ... and links or quotes for both have already been
I don't think that is a valid assumption, Joe. 97.119(g) states: "When the station is transmitting under the authority of Sec. 97.107 of this part, an indicator consisting of the appropriate letter-n
Hi, Pete. I totally agree with your examples and I could add to the list, although I have myself used the one below on rare occasions. In a pileup with lots of overlapping callers, sometimes I'm pret
Just curious, but why? I can probably think of a few dozen examples of various competitions where anyone's performance is available for everyone to see. Why should ham radio be different? The specifi
That's a pretty bold statement. Logs representing many thousands of DX contacts from CQWW have been posted for months now. Have you heard of a single contact from those logs being disallowed by the A
It occurred to me that a possible use of a Skimmer-type application might be for propagation analysis. Given that: a. Skimmer and a wideband IF to feed it (either from an outboard Softrock or the rig
Yes, I do that of course, although it is pretty obvious that a lot of stations are calling DX they can't hear either. That wasn't my point, though. I wouldn't care whether the station was CQ'ing or n
I don't get it. What good does that do? I was trying to point out that a broad use of Skimmer (or similar application) could create a global propagation map that would be extremely useful for analysi
OK, that must have been what K1TTT was talking about. Yes ... for the majority of stations with accurate address info in the various callsign databases, callsign alone would provide pretty much every
First off, I think Skimmer is extremely cool technology. I think it has the potential to draw new (probably causal) participants into contesting, and I think it might help DXpeditions or rare DX run
With all due respect, I don't believe that is true. Skimmer time-shifts. All of the other things you mention require that the operator actually be in the chair to take advantage of them. Skimmer, eve
I wasn't referring to cheating during a claimed off time. Even during an "on time", Skimmer listens for me and lines up stations for me to work even if I'm not at the rig. If I were running SO2R it e
That is not an equivalence. Such a practice would not time-shift the function of the operator ... he/she would still have to spend time listening to the stored output to make use of it. With Skimmer,
I think it just adds to the confusion, especially in noisy conditions. Consider how many number-words start with letters that represent commonly used cut numbers, or are within a dit or two of being
I would hope that the major contest sponsors and rule makers, in response to technology changes such as CW Skimmer, would try to refine their category definitions and regulations based upon a rationa