Topband: Web SDR's and 'Cheating'

[Brendan Minish]

On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 16:29 +1300, Greg - ZL3IX wrote:

> I am also a member of the SDR community (HPSDR) and I have had several 
> disputes with the proponents of remote SDR receivers.  I have requested 
> that they put long time delays, say 15s, into the audio path, but they 
> refuse to do so on the grounds that they don't want to "limit technical 
> progress for the sake of a few dishonest operators".

A few people have suggested a delay BUT I would hate to see this
implemented just to manage a problem of a few people who use real-time
access to an SDR to 'cheat' at amateur radio award chasing. The majority
of users of my SDR have to date listened outside the amateur bands
either to the various broadcast bands or to HF Utility traffic of
various kinds. Others use the system just to tune around, I myself find
it fascinating to hear what 20 or 40m sounds like on the west coast of
the states for example 
      
Almost without exception the users of the system are people like me who
enjoy SWL activities, In my case it's predominantly tropical band
broadcast Dxing. We are all fully aware that reception is taking place
AT the location of the remote SDR not in our own shacks 
A 15 second delay would make the system unacceptably laggy and
unpleasant to use, this is not a web-sdr, it's remotely controllable
(via the internet) SDR that can be freely tuned from 10KHz or so to
30MHz   

Others have suggested that I should only allow the receiver to be used
under my direct supervision, but again this means I must deny the
resource to many just because a tiny minority use the system
unethically.

Let's also not forget that for SWL's in compromised locations with high
local noise floor etc that these internet accessible SDR's  provide a
great opportunity for them to experience reception from a quiet location
with good antennas. 

-- 
73
Brendan EI6IZ