[Skimmertalk] FW: SSB + Skimmer idea

[Bob Wilson, N6TV]

On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 1:57 PM, David Robbins <k1ttt at arrl.net> wrote:

> What needs to be modified would be logging software to enable additional
> radio station identification.
>

Well, modifying the logging software will be much easier than getting
thousands of contesters to upgrade and use it, especially when you think
about all the different voice keyer hardware people are using (not just PC
sound cards).


> The idea is to identify stations by transmitting CW ID at high rate of
> speed
> (at maximum speed that skimmers can accept), at intervals that would be
> determined by the operator's behaviour (CQing vs. searching).
> CW ID should not be set to tax outside ops' hearing and would be for
> skimmers only (although I would not exclude humans entirely).
>

In theory this could work.  In practice, probably not.  It requires too
much change before it becomes useful, not to mention the inevitable
complaints about all those extra high speed CW "bleeps" at the end of every
CQ message, even if auto-notch can filter it out.

Consider instead that voice recognition software is now commonplace, for
example, hands free voice dialing in cars ("Call office"), Dragon
NaturallySpeaking for PCs, Google Voice automated transcription of
voicemail to text, automated customer services telephone systems that
prompt "What is your account number?", etc.

How hard can it be to teach a voice recognition program to recognize
commonly used radio phonetics and numbers: Alpha, Bravo, Radio, Zanzibar,
etc.?  Sooner than you might expect, we will have RTTY and voice skimmers
that work almost as well as CW Skimmer, with no need for thousands of
contesters to change hardware or software to take advantage of it.

73,
Bob, N6TV