I really think that there's a place for CW decoders. A friend of mine
was learning CW and wanted to get into CW contests. Unfortunately, his
speed was nowhere near fast enough to participate. He found that he
could S&P using a decoder and it worked well enough to keep him
interested. With his modest station he wasn't trying to break pileups,
just work a bunch of folks. So, if he finds someone calling cq with a
reasonable signal and not generating a pileup he had no difficulty
working them.
One thing I found particularly interesting was his telling me that
there's a bit of delay while the decoding takes place. He found that,
because of his impatience with the delay, he was starting to copy the cw
himself with the decoder as a backup comfort factor. Sounds like a
winner to me. He gets on the air, makes Qs, and without even thinking
about it, improves his cw,
73, Jim VE7FO
Alan Zack wrote:
> I don't know. CW decoders just don't work well as a set of ears. From my
> understanding you must be right on freq and have a very good s/n ratio. If
> you are calling on the DX's freq and someone sends UP UP slightly off his
> freq you won't decode it. And if the DX is working simplex the decoder
> won't decode because of all the different signals coming thru but your ears
> can easily distinguish the DX's signal from all the rest. If you are right
> on the DX's freq the decoder may decode his call and who he is coming back
> to but if he is sending 9M6SDX EU it may not decode the did/dit dit dah to
> let you know he wants Europe only, etc. I believe you still need to learn
> CW. What if the DX asks your name or QTH? Will you know what he is asking?
> Will you be able to send the info back to him?
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|