[CQ-Contest] Fwd: [wsjtgroup] WSJT-X 2.1.0-rc6

[David Gilbert]

You're talking to a wall.  Paul always does this stuff ... if you don't 
view ham radio the way he does you aren't doing ham radio.

What Paul is never able to grasp is that "ham radio" covers a much 
broader scope than he perceives, and that includes contesting.  As long 
as contest sponsors are thoughtful enough to properly categorize 
activities, I can find no problem at all with there being CW contests, 
SSB contests, RTTY contests, FT4 contests, etc.  They simply require 
different combinations of skills, and having different types of contests 
simply serves the broader interests of hams in general.  It's still ham 
radio.

It's ridiculous and purely arbitrary to assert that the only valid 
contests are those where hams do their own decoding (which of course 
leaves out the very popular RTTY mode).  What about encoding?   I would 
bet that most contesters today don't send their own information, at 
least not on CW and RTTY.  We push a button on the keyboard and the 
logger does it for us.  Why should only one direction of the 
communication path need to fit Paul's narrow view? I have literally done 
entire major CW contests without ever touching the paddle (and had half 
the received callsigns/reports auto-filled for me by the logger to boot).

I wouldn't like to see contests lump fully automated QSOs with 
non-automated ones, but the signal processing argument is bogus. The 
ability for FT4 to copy weak signals comes at the cost of speed, and I 
can list other disparities between stations as well.  If I have a rig 
with better DSP capabilities I'm going to be able to hear stations 
somebody with a lesser rig won't.  It's not my proficiency that makes a 
difference ... it's PROCESSING that does.  If I have narrower filters 
than somebody else does I can pick out stations from a pack better than 
somebody else could.  It's not my proficiency that makes a difference 
... it's PROCESSING.  FT4 is simply a digital mode with different 
processing tradeoffs, and why Paul thinks that the possibilities being 
"limitless" is a problem is beyond me.

The DSP found in almost all modern rigs is itself "processing".  It 
takes the analog signal from the antenna, slices and dices it to bits, 
runs it through various software algorithms, transforms it in both time 
and frequency domains, and reconstructs it to audio.

And what is so special about audio?  It is merely one of our senses.  
Sight is also a natural sense, and if some of us (disclaimer ... I've 
never done a RTTY contest in my life) prefer to "decode" our received 
information visually (i.e., read text) what makes that inferior to 
hearing it?  Yes, a digital mode has the potential to automatically load 
contact information into the log, but what part of typing is a 
fundamental ham radio activity (especially since I can accomplish pretty 
much the same thing in a CW or SSB contest just by clicking on the 
callsign in a band map)? You still have to read to comprehend the QSO.  
What makes hearing fundamental to ham radio while seeing isn't?

It's kind of funny in a way ... most humans can listen faster than they 
can read.  It's not like reading gives you an advantage.  Both hearing 
and seeing require brain translation to achieve comprehension.

It's up to the contest sponsors to keep entry categories fair and 
orderly, but as long as it requires competition of some sort as defined 
by the rules (communication proficiency, rig building, antenna design, 
choice of band/time, ... whatever) to decide who won and who didn't I 
totally don't understand the need to put such narrow boundaries on what 
comprises ham radio and what doesn't.

Diversity is healthy.

73,
Dave   AB7E

p.s. I can't wait to see what kind of private message Paul will send me 
this time.



On 6/3/2019 9:25 AM, Chuck Dietz wrote:
> I don’t have any idea what you are saying here. Are you just bad mouthing
> digital modes?
>
> Chuck W5PR
>
> On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 6:55 AM Paul O'Kane <pokane at ei5di.com> wrote:
>
>> Great - we have yet another data mode.  There is no single data mode that
>> is
>> "best" in all respects.  It's always a compromise between time, signal
>> rate,
>> bandwidth and number of discrete channels or tones - the potential
>> combinations
>> are limitless.
>>
>> What all data modes (including RTTY) have in common is that they require
>> machine decoding.  It seems to me that ham-radio contesters do their own
>> decoding, whether it's CW or Phone.  Everything else is data processing
>> and,
>> increasingly, fully-automated data processing.
>>
>> Let's leave data modes to the Data-Processing-over-RF apps.
>>
>> 73,
>> Paul EI5DI
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 02/06/2019 19:49, Jim Brown wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>>> Subject: [wsjtgroup] WSJT-X 2.1.0-rc6
>>> Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2019 14:32:20 -0400
>>> From: Joe Taylor joe at Princeton.EDU [wsjtgroup]
>>> <wsjtgroup-noreply at yahoogroups.com>
>>> Reply-To: Joe Taylor <joe at Princeton.EDU>
>>> To: wsjtgroup at yahoogroups.com <wsjtgroup at yahoogroups.com>
>>>
>>> To:   Users of WSJT-X -- especially those interested in radio contesting
>>> From: WSJT Development Group
>>>
>>> As you know, we have been developing a protocol called FT4 for use in
>>> radio contesting.  A new version of FT4 is now available for testing
>>> in WSJT-X 2.1.0-rc6.
>>>
>>> PLEASE NOTE THAT FT4 IN RELEASE CANDIDATE 6 IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH
>>> THAT IN ANY PREVIOUS RELEASE.
>>>
>>> Therefore: Please stop using WSJT-X 2.1.0-rc5.  If you wish to use FT4
>>> after today or to take advantage of other recent program corrections
>>> or enhancements, you should use WSJT-X 2.1.0-rc6.
>>
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