[CQ-Contest] Determining ASSISTED vs NON-ASSISTED -- was:=>RE:Cheating and bad journalism

[Tom W8JI]

My reply was in the context of finding pileups. Panadaptors and other ham 
things do a terrible job of identifying a pileup.

A good analyzer with peak storage, not some old HP 141 from the 70's but 
something much newer, can do a pretty remarkable job. This is because it can 
measure the peak accumulated power in a certain bandwidth and then store it. 
You after like a 10-20 sweep peak storage you wind up with a smooth stable 
trace that shows either really strong single stations or pileups that are 
the highest sum of all signals in a bandwidth as it sweeps.

People claim panadaptors are good, but I don't find them any more useful 
than tuning around. They are nothing like what summing all the power in a 
window (of say 300 Hz width) and then storing highest peaks to make a stable 
picture. You don't get callsigns, but you know where the big messes or big 
signals are in less than a minute.


> K0HB wrote:
>
> "A panadapter or bandscope gathers no callsigns or other station 
> information, just a general view of band conditions."
>
> Right, but imagine it's Sunday, late in a contest and you're S&P'ing for 
> new stations. The panadapter will show a new signal instantly, let's say 
> 100 KHz away from where you are currently tuned. Point and click to tune 
> the new signal to listen for the call sign, it's a new one, so you make 
> the QSO for the log. Wham, bam, done.
>
> Now consider blind manual VFO tuning. You have no idea there's a new 
> signal 100 KHz away. You only discover it after spending perhaps a full 
> minute scanning the band, checking other signals as you turn the knob, 
> until you happen to encounter the new signal.
>
> We have all heard some stations give up after making only a few CQ's. It's 
> entirely possible that the panadapter station makes the QSO, by snagging 
> the new caller quickly, while the band scanning manual VFO tuner doesn't 
> get the QSO because the CQ'er gave up before the manual operator could get 
> there.
>
> Under this scenario panadapters do provide a limited assist compared to 
> manual tuning. In VE3GTC's post, I think he was suggesting there should be 
> a wider gap between Unassisted vs. Assisted. One way to do that is to make 
> Unassisted equal to traditional radio in its purest form, which is turning 
> a VFO knob with no technological assistance whatsoever. Then allow 
> Assisted or Unlimited to have all of the tools and toys at their disposal.
>
> 73 Jim K6OK
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