[CQ-Contest] Skimmer musings

[prickler.schneider at t-online.de]

R P Davis wrote:

>perhaps it threatens to make their CW skills - and by extension they themselves - obsolete.  
>
Exactly in the same sense as marathon runners would feel threatend if 
engine driven wheel chairs were allowed in the same category - taking 
out the individual human challenge. But other than in running we have no 
definition and no consensus to what extent the human part may be 
replaced by tech-aids before we loose an essential part of the 
competition (finding and identifying stations via human S&P vs. Skimmering).

With the majority (?????) defining it only as a tech competition there 
will be no real barrier on the route to robo-contesting. The individual 
skills required will be those of the engineer planning, constructing, 
programming, wiring and setting up things to require as few slow human 
actions as possible during the contest. Remain a few strategic decisions 
about band changes, performance control of the station and the necessary 
skill set to deal with information overload as long as no capable 
software is available to completely select and sort all the input.

Will be interesting to see whether a "traditional" category will evolve 
besides an "open" category.

And please don´t denounce me as someone wanting to have AM back and 
arguments like that. You wouldn´t denounce a marathon runner in the same 
way when he objects to using the wheel chair with engine as the "more 
efficient way" to span the 42,5 km. With the situation being different 
in both kind of competitions I´m happy that I started running again.

Thanks for reading and 73, Chris

(www.dl8mbs.de)