[CQ-Contest] CW or SSB FCC says neither.

[Bill Coleman]

On 8/5/02 13:51, Rich Gelber, K2WR at k2wr at njdxa.org wrote:

>Another aspect of both CW and SSB is that a sufficiently skilled operator
>can copy more than one signal at a time.  I'm not aware of a "new digital
>mode" that supports this "feature".

Well, RTTY operators have been using 2 or 3 radios for quite some time.

And it isn't a difficult task to process multiple digital signals at one 
time. There are PSK31 appliactions that do this today.

In fact, if we get beyond the limitations of a radio "audio channel" 
there's no reason a digital radio couldn't decode 15 kHz, 50 kHz or even 
an entire band worth of signals similtaneously -- something that would be 
difficult or impossible with the human ear.

>Of course if you increased the data rate, and hence the bandwidth, you could
>make the QSO's so fast that it would be indistinguishable from copying more
>than one signal at a time, but the increased bandwidth would leave CW as
>superior again. ;-)

Very nice straw man you've knocked down there.

If anything, digital modes using FSK, PSK or other types of modulation 
are easier to decode multiple instances similtaneously than OOK 
(on-off-keying) modulations (like CW).



Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
            -- Wilbur Wright, 1901