Hi Bob,
Sure got a chuckle imagining your wife tugging on a rope to turn your beam
in her housecoat and wearing rubber boots in the rain. And your still
happily married? <grin>
No Bob, not quite that automated, perhaps I should have been a bit more
clear in my explanation. My contest software gives me beam direction from a
callsign, that calculated direction is available for the computer interface
on my rotor. Then if I choose, by pressing a key combination on my keyboard
I can move the beam.
Most times I operate S&P and if permitted for my class, cluster spotting. As
you can well imagine there are many times the band could be open in a couple
of directions at the same time for us frozen Canucks. There is no doubt
turning my beam does help me copy a lot of stations that could easily be
lost in the mud if I did not turn the rotor to dig them out. Even during a
run it is possible to peak a new direction by using a received call. In
short the beam can swung from Q to Q when running S&P and off the cluster,
especially for NA calls. I do have to agree with you, for most EU stations,
just point the beam and enjoy.
I have the good old Ham IV which has been twisting the heck out of a TH6 for
26 years now. I don't try abuse the rotor but it does get worked when
needed. Which gets me back to the original problem in tracking direction by
callsign area. If the station is not located where my software thinks it
should be, moving the beam can make things a lot worse. Even for a station
doing manual calculation (or having their wife tug a rope) while looking for
'lost' calls the rotor (or wife) can get unnecessary use (or mad) by hunting
for a stronger signal.
Thanks for the ton of Q's Bob, keep them coming.
73 Eric - VE3GSI
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Chudek - K0RC
>
> Eric - VE3GSI said:
>
> "Hi Bob and Gang,
>
> For those of us that use contest callsigns to automatically
> turn the rotor to the correct direction with software, wrong
> call areas often are a problem. If you tweak the rotor on a
> weak callsign that not in their call district then there is a
> good chance on making the exchange worse and potentially make
> more errors.
>
> I for one would like to see the callsign/area used."
>
>
>
> To which I reply:
>
> Man... you're living in the lap of luxury!!! My wife really
> gets upset when I tell her to go out and pull on the rope too
> many times during a contest... especially when it's raining
> or snowing... :-)
>
> All kidding aside, that's certainly a logical reason why you
> want to identify the physical district. I was hung up on the
> concept of working the different callsigns (like WPX), not
> the physical districts. I'm not using a rotor interface. My
> yagi basically follows the sun, unless it's a juicy
> multiplier and I'm not getting through the pileup. But when
> working EU, I can't fathom the rotor being tweaked 10 or 20
> degrees back and forth when calling stations. I would expect
> premature rotor failure. Heck, my yagi has about 60 degrees
> beamwidth between -3 dB points so I don't see the point in
> moving the antenna for (almost) each contact.
>
> Can you set the "sensitivity" of offset before the rotor
> kicks in? For example, "don't move unless the new station is
> more than 30 degrees from my current position"?
>
> 73 de Bob - KØRC in MN
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