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Re: Topband: Digial mode spurious issues

To: <topband@contesting.com>, <kr7o@vhfdx.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: Digial mode spurious issues
From: "Tom W8JI" <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Reply-to: Tom W8JI <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2014 12:14:19 -0500
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
I have been using WSJT since 2001 and cringe every time I hear it called a "QRP mode".

I want to put this to rest with just a few more comments.

While we call these digital modes, they are really baseband audio transmissions run through SSB transmitters. They are subject to all the dynamic range problems and limitations of SSB transmitters processing the same types of audio tones.

The usual "cure" offered for the poor or limited performance of the SSB systems that process the encoded audio is to turn the power down. That doesn't always work to eliminate problems, plus low power obviously limits the potential range.

This stuff is really all just an audio signal processed by a SSB rig. That's why it can go into the SSB transmitter! SSB transmitters are just not that good, and that is why these systems create adjacent channel problems and will always create problems. They should be off someplace out of the way of weak CW signals, not nestled up against weak signal CW areas. A receiver cannot filter out transmitter flaws, no matter what some might claim or imagine. If a spurious signal is right on top of a weak station, it is on top of it.

These are just the hard, cold, facts of life. It's just disappointing we have no technical people who think things through before picking frequencies for "new modes".

73 Tom
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