Ron,

With all due respect, Oh My God, here we go again. Maybe we should all go back to spark gap and be REAL harms. Perhaps we should all do EME with just CW or SSB. BTW if that were the case both you and I would probably not be making any EME contacts. Lance says that JT65 is 10-12 dB better than CW. And CW is 10-12 dB better than SSB. With an EME path loss of -252 dB we can either use signal processing technology to make up the difference or we can use hardware as in bigger amps and bigger arrays to make up that 1-0-12 dB. As for me, I will take the signal processing technology.

When your signal is a very few Hertz wide, you can pack a number of QSO's in the space of a single SSB transmission. So are all of the FT8 transmissions on the same frequency - not really. As I recall one of the selling points for SSB was that you could get two, yes two SSB transmissions in the same space as a single AM transmission. Now with FT8 you can get dozens of QSO's in the space of a single SSB transmission.

Ron, time and technology march on. As Old Timers we have a choice. We can cling to the past and boldly state that anyone who doesn't do it like we did it twenty years ago is not a real ham. Alternately we can address and learn to use the technology of today just as you and I have done with EME and JT-65. If you and I were in school today we would not be learning how to build a better superheterodyne radio or a bigger and better tube amp. We would be building "radios" with GNURadio and learning all about high power solid state devices.

The choice is ours. I chose to remember the old while learning and using the new to best of my ability. And even though I use SDR radios and enjoy digital communication I think of myself as still being a real ham.

Peace,

Johnny <smile.png>

-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Rogers
Sent: Sep 11, 2017 10:16 AM
To: 'John Kludt' , 'Fourlanders'
Subject: RE: [Fourlanders] Transverter Support Already Requested for WSJT-X

And…I pulled this from one of the contesting reflectors this morning…

On Mon, 11 Sep 2017….

IMO these are no longer Amateur Radio operating skill contests. They

have evolved into Computer operating skill contests, where whoever has

the fastest and most computers and monitors running and can type the

fastest wins. Having to juggle between chat rooms and new digital modes

vs. actually operating radio has gotten to the point of being

ridiculous.

And what's up with everyone trying to use FT8 to make local

6m contacts?

Half the time they never complete because half the people

forgot to change to contest mode for grid square exchanges.

And the idea of everyone trying to use just one frequency for this during a

contest is like having a bunch of CB radios all stuck on channel 19

jamming each other.

There should be _separate_ contests.

Contests for Amateur Radio OPERATORS.

Contests for computers owners.

73

W3DHJ/R -- DM77, DM78, DM87, DM88

Ron

WW8RR

From: Fourlanders [mailto:fourlanders-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of John Kludt
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2017 9:53 AM
To: Fourlanders
Subject: [Fourlanders] Transverter Support Already Requested for WSJT-X

Gang,

My WSJT-X box was overflowing today. Good news on the VHFer front is that support for transverter offsets has already been requested. This should help a lot with rigs that cannot display the actual frequency. The one thing that may get in the way is we are a relatively small community competing for the same programming resources as the HF crowd.

Johnny