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Re: Topband: CQ Zones

To: topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: CQ Zones
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2021 20:49:33 -0800
List-post: <mailto:topband@contesting.com>
On 3/9/2021 3:50 PM, Martin Kratoska wrote:
SECOND - am I allowed to differ between a QSO between living operators (possibly friends) and two machines?

Martin,

As has been said of some American politicians, we are certainly entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts. Your assumption that all users of digital modes are QSO machines is simply false. I have heard that there are "bad actors" using QSO machines, but the vast majority of users of these modes do not. And, frankly, I don't care about others cheating for things like this -- I simply take pride in what I can accomplish with the available tools. I don't care if others are using computers to copy code -- they're the ones missing out on the fun of CW. Indeed, our contesting club has close to two dozen no-code licensees who have become very good CW ops using their own ears. CWOPS, of which I'm a charter member (#69), was organized by NCCC members, among them my neighbor K6RB. You probably know about their CW tutoring program.

I use K1JT's modes for their intended purpose -- to make QSOs under very difficult conditions and with different sorts of propagation. Except for DXpeditions, I use them only on 160M to work EU from my QTH in San Francisco, and on 6M to work multi-hop E-skip, ionospheric scatter, and meteor scatter. FT8, for example, has an advantage of at least 10 dB over CW with great ops on both ends. I've heard five CW signals from EU in the past seven or eight seasons, and only two of them have heard me. Their newer mode, FST4, has an additional advantage of 3-10 dB, depending on the TX/RX sequence length.

It pleases me that you've found my work useful.

73, Jim K9YC


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