[CQ-Contest] Remote operation

[Mats Strandberg]

Perfectly agree with you Hans!

During the mid 80's we started experimenting with computerized DUPE-checking
and a bit later also logging, using the technique of that time, a Macintosh
computer with a small monochrome screen. Once we had reached 1000 QSOs or
more, the software started lagging and we had to wait several seconds
between the logging of QSOs. You could not even call this software an online
logging program because we logged everything first on normal log sheets
manually, and the other operator typed the sheets into the computer. I could
at that time accept this type of software easily as it hardly made our
station more competitive than stations who did not use this early and
primitive logging technique. It only made the score calculation,
DUPE-checking and QSL-typing work easier.

I went QRT for 15 years between 1989 and 2004.

When I returned back, I even hesitated whether I would enter contesting
again because of the "сheating" with software that not only logged the QSOs
in realtime, but also transmitted CW!  I was very conservative and claimed
this is not contesting. It is not Amateur Radio!

After some calming down and adjustment period, I realized that perhaps this
is a development of the technology and not automatically harming contesting
as such.

Today, almost ten years later, I think it would have been hard for me to
seriously work a contest without a logging software.

However, when I now follow the discussions and the arguments from a
minority, that a remotely controlled transceiver should give any advantages
compared to a normal set-up and be unsportmanlike, then it is pretty obvious
to me, that the logging software makes a MORE HUGE difference in efficiency
when I compare it with even using a memory keyer and a computer not
connected to my radio. The advantage of using a logging software, MANY TIMES
exceeds the benefit I would have to use my own constructed station 100 km
away, in the same DXCC country, remotely connected in my downtown apartment!
Logging software is far more "cheating" than remote transceiving from your
countryside location.

So Paul and other, please explain why you so gladly accept your computer to
make it possible for you to increase your QSO rates and the control of
multipliers on each band, but you are so persistently and pricipially
against developments that actually only make it possible for many contesters
to remain in contesting?  The man-made disturbances in the downtown areas
are not going to be less in a few years. Prohibition to put up normal
antennas and towers will not disappear.

Contesting without development means that the only real contesting is
performed with homemade radios, straight keys and paper logging. Is this
what we aim for?

73 de R3/SM6LRR, Mats







2011/2/27 <kzerohb at gmail.com>

> I don't "miss" your point, Paul.  I simply do not accept it as valid.
>
> A strict implementation of your requirement to be "independent of all other
> communications modes and communications technologies" would prohibit, for
> example, computer controlled transceivers and computer generated CW or
> RTTY,
> since those methods commonly depend on non-amateur modes such as
> ANSI/EIA-232 or "Universal Serial Bus (USB)" for their communications link
> between the operator and the amateur radio equipment.
>
> 73, de Hans, K0HB/K7
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul O'Kane
> Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 1:59 PM
> To: kzerohb at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: Remote operation
>
> Hans,
>
> > If two equivalently equipped stations exist "side-by-side" (just far
> > enough apart to avoid mutual interference), one controlled remotely and
> > the other conventionally controlled, explain the competitive advantage
> > enjoyed by the remotely controlled station.
>
> Whether deliberately or otherwise, once again
> you've missed the point.
>
> Amateur radio is, by definition, independent of
> all other communications modes and communications
> technologies.
>
> When "QSOs" are not possible without the continued
> availability of other such modes or technologies,
> they are no longer amateur radio QSOs.
>
> 73,
> Paul EI5DI
>
> "Just a boy and his amateur radio"
>
>
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