[TenTec] An accessory idea for the new Omni VII

[Duane - N9DG]

Duane - Note to self: Do not plan on humor as a new career
should I ever need to find new one. Two attempts at humor in
the last couple days were not universally taken as such.

If some on HF took my "DC" remark as a slight then the some
folks on VLF might really be bothered by my "Negative RF"
nickname for the spectrum below the AM BCB. And then a
humorous spin of the oft expressed sentiment that PC's should
*never* be mixed with or closely integrated with "radio"
seems to have suffered a similar fate. Oh well....

As for the Omni VII accessory idea I am completely serious
about having such a thing. I think that there is a very real
and useful purpose for such a device, it would really make
the Ethernet feature of the VII that much better. My joke
about not needing a computer is sincerely in the context that
there are times that you would not want to use a PC for
whatever reason. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you
go back and look at my various posts related to this topic
over the years you'd see I have pretty much always
acknowledged that.

But on the flip side I will come out swinging if someone
tries to tell me:

1) The efforts to intermix PC's with radios such as SDR's
and/or graphical user interfaces "can't work".

2) "Isn't real radio".

3) Shouldn't be done or even pursued simply because they
don't like it or understand the idea.

4) That it has never been done that way before "so why would,
or should, anyone want to try any new and different things
now".

5) That tightly integrating computers with radios somehow
*always* equates to the "automation" of the QSO making
process to a level of "why bother operating radio anymore if
the computer is doing all the work".

Well in my current Pegasus configuration and the
configurations that I'm pursuing for the future the sentiment
in item 5 is *completely* backwards. The stuff I have done
already actually *increases* the amount of "radio" that I do
with my very own ears, there has been no PC processing of
QSO's for more than 99% of all the QSO's that I've made to
date. The PC's are simply making me aware of more signals
than I could with traditional radios. The few that were "PC
processed" were only by virtue of the mode's design or
protocol - not my station's configuration.

The saying that "you can't work them if you can't hear them"
is indeed 100% true; but to that I will add my own two axioms
that say:

1) "You can't hear them if you don't know where they are".

2) "You may never hear them if you can't get to them quickly
enough".

These two items drive 90% of why I'm so completely on board
with PC based SDR's. My personal *requirement* for achieving
this is to do it without the use of *anything* that is
outside of the equipment that is *wholly* contained within my
station. However *anything* that I can build into my station,
be it either hardware, or software, is fair game to achieve
those two goals. To me that *is* ham radio in its purest form
and fully captures the spirit and intent of Part 97.1(b).

Duane
N9DG


--- Ken Brown <ken.d.brown at hawaiiantel.net> wrote:

> Duane - N9DG wrote:
> >   those pesky computers that are ruining ham radio 
> >   
> Huh?


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