[CQ-Contest] WRTC looking for a new team leader

[Jack Brindle]

Paul;

I don’t believe you really hold this belief. As a contester and an experimenter I strongly disagree with it. While the use of some of the techniques you cite in contest may be argumentative, their existence in Amateur Radio is definitely not. Amateur Radio is all about experimentation - we would not exist without it! Creation of new modes has been a great part of the hobby since its inception - the three current forms of the major communications modes, non-spark CW, SSB and RTTY, are a direct result of experimentation and were not part of the original hobby! With regards to the digital modes, they definitely have their place in emergency communications, a very large part of our hobby.

As a participant in the development of packet radio, and as an engineer at Motorola, I directly saw the effect of ham experimentation, including the direct evolution of packet radio into WiFi. We hams developed a high-speed 56K packet network in Georgia, state of the art in the late 1980s. This carried much traffic, including the newly developed (for the time) packet cluster that many folks now use across the internet. To put it simply, experimentation was alive then, and as FT-8 demonstrates, is alive now.

All this aside, you do have an interesting argument as to whether remote stations should be used in contesting. My opinion? Like keyboard and voice keyers, electric automated rotators, the use of the aforementioned packet cluster for contesting and so forth, the train has already left the station. Trying to argue them out of existence at this point is rather moot, unless you would like to create a contest that bans (some or all of) them. Actually, I hope you do - it would be a very fun contest!

73,
Jack, W6FB


> On Jun 14, 2018, at 6:47 AM, Paul O'Kane <pokane at ei5di.com> wrote:
> 
> On 14/06/2018 02:21, Barry W2UP wrote:
>> We need an internet-only WRTC. That's the only way to equalize everything. It will be sponsored by EI5DI.
> 
> That may be tongue-in-cheek but, nevertheless, it misrepresents my position on the internet - which is "radio amateurs do it (communicate with one another) with RF. Everyone else needs the internet."
> 
> When W2UP or anyone else needs or uses the internet to communicate with other radio amateurs, what's happening is something other than amateur radio. Remote operators cannot have any contacts without, typically, using the internet to both communicate and control. And that's perfectly OK - good for them, they're having fun and learning something new, but that "something new" represents amateur hybrid communications.
> 
> __________________________
> 
> On 13/06/2018 Ria, N2RJ wrote:
> 
>> Remote operation for contesting in  general is “ok.”
> 
> That's correct, but only when remote operators, and their hybrid-communications contacts, compete only with one another. Does anyone believe that remote hunting is ethical? Why then should remote contesting and award-chasing be any less unethical - unless the remote operators are competing only with one another?
> 
> ___________________________
> 
> On 14/06/2018 10:12, Jim Brown K9YC wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>> I'm a genuine old fart, first licensed in 1955. I try to learn something new every day, and in the spirit of ham radio, try to share what I've learned with others. I suggest that the bashers adopt these objectives. 
> 
> I'm nearly as old, and I respectfully suggest that FT8, machine-to-machine, QSOs have nothing to do with the spirit of amateur radio. Explaining this is not "bashing", merely demonstrating that the emperor has no clothes.
> 
> Here's some automated FT8 operation - I see nothing in it to correspond to any sensible view of the "spirit of ham radio".
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50vwtGnmyd4
> 
> Here's an article by NT0Z that, I suggest, helps to put FT8 operation in perspective.
> http://ei5di.com/jt.html
> 
> 73,
> Paul EI5DI
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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