RadioBanter - View Single Post - AB5S WT 05-235 Comments to FCC

August 29th 05, 05:59 PM

wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:

snip

I'm certainly all for keeping those accursed robot
stations in their
own section of the bands (actually, I am not in
favor of their existance
- I think they violate the spirit if not the law).

Repeaters, satellites and beacons are robots of a sort.
Should we ban those too?

Of course, the repeater is supposed to have an active control OP. The
frequencies are also agreed upon. IOW, anyone operating simplex on say
the portions of 2 meters designated as repeater frequencies might expect
some problems. Sats are also pretty well defined too.

The nature of PSK31 is to use what is essentially the BW that 1 SSB
signal would use. We pack a lot of signals in that small space. Due to
the nature of the signal and modulation, we tend to congregate in just
that one area.

When the pactor station opens up beside us, we can't tell each other to
QSY, we are done for the day. Turn off the rig, or maybe change the band.

I suppose that we could agree on a predefined frequency to change to in
the event of interference, since there is no way to let the robot
station know that it is interfering with us.

But it seems to me that we are allowing unattended operation to
interfere with what is a popular, BW conserving mode, populated by
Amateurs who are at least (moreso IMHO) as gentlemanly and ladylike as
CW to be QRM'ed in the interest of getting the spam through.

Yeah - progress.....

How is a robot
station that wipes out sometimes dozens of QSO's any different from
certain Amateurs who have been known to broadcast "bulletins
right over top of ongoing QSOs?

Several important measures:

1) Does the bulletin station operate on a published schedule of
times and frequencies?

2) Does the bulletin station transmit only information of
clear and special interest to radio amateurs? (IOW, not general
news and such?)

3) Is the bulletin station using an approved method of control?

First, let me state my position:

I do not believe that one way transmissions should be legal on the
amateur bands.

Period.

All of the "qualifications as to published schedules, frequencies,
interests, and controls is bafflegab, designed to justify the ARRL
transmissions.

There are people like K1MAN in the world, ready to rub peoples noses in
the mud any chance they get. and this is a big fat chance here!

Voice modes like SSB and AM are protected from modes like
PSK31 and
RTTY. The spectrum allowed to those modes in the US HF ham
bands
amounts to more than half the total spectrum available! If
such
protection is good enough for SSB and AM, why not Morse Code?

I have to smile at the concept of SSB and AM being
protected from my wimpy little PSK31 signal.

But they are! You can legally transmit PSK31 anywhere on the HF ham
bands where voice modes are *not* allowed. Why does SSB need
protection from PSK31 but not Morse Code?

Dunno. Nothing like pertectin killerwatt signals from QRP!

This sort of thing has some odd ramifiactions. Imagine if you wanted to
use a combined text/voice mode. Such a mode might
use SSB *with carrier* for the voice part, with the carrier
phase-shifted to send the text. Such a mode is not allowed
on amateur HF.

One can even imagine a mode consisting of SSB on one sideband,
SSTV-type images (digitally encoded) on the other, and text
on the phase-shifted carrier. Something neat to try out, huh?
Except it's not allowed on the amateur HF bands either.

Butfull-carrier double-sideband AM voice is allowed.

In both cases the prohibition is not due to the bandwidth used
but because of the content (voice/image vs. text)

Now those are all things that can be worked on.

Did you hear about the proposed PSK31 text/voice mode? It actually
would probably work better as BPSK64, but it is both interesting and
goofy at the same time.

I understand your analogy, but I don't think it quite hits the
fundamental divide point. Certainly RTTY and SSTV and ATV
and HELL mode
have been around for quite a while.

Sure - but they've been of limited use until recently because of
the difficulty of implementation. With the drastic reduction
in the cost of a computer, the increased computing power, and
the wide selection of easy-to-use freeware, the game is very
different than even 10 years ago.

Of course none of this prevents someone from having "happy fingers"....

hehe.

- Mike KB3EIA -