To further Paul's point , CW "readers" have been around for decades.
Automating the reply process on CW seems to me to be a "relatively
simple" programing exercise with a USB keyer.� Heck by adding the
ability to activate the frequency scan of most modern transceivers to
mix I can scan up and down the band looking for or calling CQ with a CW
robot if I wanted to, again the programing exercise is trivial compared
to the original FT8 concept and the technology involved in weak signal
processing that came out of deep space telelmtry
One major difference between CW and FT8 is that with CW (and RTTY for
that matter) you really need to "search" a range of frequencies to find
a station to work. perhaps FT8/FT4 will/needs to evolve to say a "range
of frequencies" say 14075 to 14100 (not a proposal just an example)
rather than collecting� every one on 14074 (most major dxpeditions do
this now by necessity) ...With the growing popularity of FT8 seems like
the 50 or so subchannels available is quickly filling up at peak times.
The net of this has been inexperienced ops sadly not paying attention to
the waterfall display to see if anyone is using the a particular� audio
subschannel before calling on top of someone else. No surprise there
either, I am always amazed at how many CW ops call on the DX frequency
even though the OP sends "UP" at the end of every transmission.
For those of you banging at the gates with your pitchforks wanting to
burn the monster at the stake I say get out your pen and paper in
October and send in your paper log for Sweepstakes, unplug your memory
keyer and go back to your J-38.� Yeah if they invented time travel for
real tomorrow, I would likely go back to 1965 in a heart beat, but I
will miss my computer terribly. I will miss the fact that I can run a KW
on 6M and never have to worry about TVI to Channel 2 or 3. Though I am
seldom a new technology adopter ( I came to FT8 only this year) ..change
is inevitable ...evolve or die my friends. Life ( and amateur radio for
that matter) is never "easy" or really comfortable.
Dave
NR1DX
On 8/2/2019 10:47 PM, Paul Christensen wrote:
If I can set up my station on ft8 and have it run automatically and
collect new entities...
If you want to fully automate FT8, there's a presentation available on
YouTube. It only requires installing Quick Macros (QM). No hacking to
the core program is required. During my setup, it was necessary to
start, stop and replay the video many times before it was running
correctly. But once running, it's easy enough to further automate
WSJT-X to change bands based on the PC clock (e.g., operate 17m-6m
only during daylight hours. The next logical step is to automate based
on propagation software as well as automatically turn rotators and
switch antennas based on propagation software prediction.
Be aware that once QM is controlling WSJT-X, you can move around
WSJT-X windows on the desktop but you cannot resize a window where any
control takes place. Any tampering of the window size almost
necessitates reprogramming QM macros.
I'm a core CW op. That won't change even if I'm the last CW OP
standing. Despite automating FT8, I rarely operate that mode and I
don�t collect awards. Never have. The exercise to fully automate was
to prove to myself that it was possible, and as an experiment to see
how far automation can be taken.
Paul, W9AC
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www.ArtekManuals.com
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