[CQ-Contest] Minority Report: FT4 - Robotic Contesting

[Edward Sawyer]

Tom, Great ideas.  Run as an FT4 only contest - its wonderful.

Ed  N1UR

-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Tom
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2019 5:19 AM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Minority Report: FT4 - Robotic Contesting

Yes, but what would they do? I'll answer that in a minute.

There has been a bunch of complaining about FT4 and the automation put into selecting which station to work.  I'm sure the authors saw the 6 second cycle time and decided that was a useful thing to add.  The problem is that it diminishes the amount of operator intervention required and thus the effect of operator skill on outcome.  Worse, it makes fully automated stations possible.  What would be the fun in that?

Why not turn a disadvantage into an advantage? Computer games have automated "players".  They are used to enhance the experience of the humans playing the game.  What if a *new* contest had robots that were there to provide bonus points and/or multipliers to the human participants?  What if the robots could be worked multiple times during a contest, dispensing the bonus points to far away stations during the
15 minutes, close stations during the second 15, odd grids during the third 15, even grids during the fourth 15, etc.   The point is not these examples, the point is that the robots would be designed to force participants to make tactical and strategic decisions that would require operator skill.  These skills would replace those lost due to the other changes.

Stop thinking about how FT4 will ruin contesting.  Start thinking about how one would design a one hour contest (like CWT) that would leverage FT4's strengths and get hams with rudimentary antennas interested in HF propagation. Or not.

73,

Tom - N1MM

On 5/2/2019 9:51 PM, Hans Brakob wrote:
> For curiosity's sake, I would be interested in a contest where some robots were in the mix, but a contest of only robots would be a giant yawn.
>
> 73, de Hans, KØHB
> "Just a Boy and his Radio"
>
> ________________________________
> From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com> on behalf of 
> ktfrog007--- via CQ-Contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2019 8:40 PM
> To: cq-contest at contesting.com; wsjtgroup at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [CQ-Contest] Minority Report: FT4 - Robotic Contesting
>
>
> I'm sure I'm way deep in the minority but I'd love to see an automated contest run as an experiment.  FT4 could be used as the mode with the appropriate software.
>
> Control operators would have to be present and the software would need some kind of periodic time out requiring operator input to continue, as well as being able to alert the control ops in case of problems and  governors to keep the program from running amok.
>
> In the latter case, the software would need a driver for a klaxon.
>
> Aside from the fact that virtually nobody likes this, is there any real reason not to do it?  Some regulatory issue not covered above?
>
>
> 73,Ken, AB1J
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