"Brian Kelly" wrote in message
om...
"Carl R. Stevenson" wrote in message
...
"Brian Kelly" wrote in message

Carl check me here but wasn't it you who advocated the abandonment of
all mode setasides in order to be able to run wall-to-wall spread
spectrum on 20M?

No ... I have pointed out that most countries of the world do not have
"by-mode" sub-band allocations in their amateur regulations and it
doesn't
seem to cause any real problem.

Not the point and most of us were well aware of the differences in
band/mode edges.

I also (as did Gary Coffman, independently)

'nother sweetheart . . .

I don't know about "sweetheart" ... but Gary is a good ham
and quite technically astute from my observation.
I wish he was still around here ...

postulate a strawman design
(but something feasible, never the less) for a system that, in the 150
kHz
of CW/data sub-band on 20m could support a very large number of
20 wpm Morse-equivalent QSOs with virtually no interference.
That was immediately rejected by Morse fanatics,

What's this frigging "Morse fanatic" nonsense? I'm certainly no "Morse
fanatic", I probably spend as much time on an annualized basis with a
mic in my mouth as I do running CW. I use Morse and I support the use
of and testing for Morse.

This particular non-fanatic immediately spotted the fallacies and
impossibilities in your posts on the topic as they relate to any mode
which occupies an entire ham band and is overlaid/underlaid on narrow
modes particularly under weak signal condx. This is not fanaticism.
This is the same reaction some hugely overwheming majority of the
active hams today would reject on smell or sight. Including the
technically savvy amongst us. More like *particularly* the technically
savvy.

The "strawman designs" that Gary and I postulated did NOT contemplate
the use of SS across the whole band as an "underlay." The modulation was
completely different, with a fair amount of coding.

who said something
like:
"We don't want no stinking keyboard mode." (My response was to
make Morse I/O a user interface option. Still rejected.)
"The fun of it is digging the weak ones out of the noise." (My response
was, "You want channel impairments? No problem. I can program
all sorts of simulated channel impairments into the system to make
copying
as hard as you want ... without having to trash the underlying, reliable
communications system." Still rejected.)

Exactly and none of it flew then and it never will.

Why? ... if it looks to the user EXACTLY as "traditional Morse" one would
not be able to tell the difference (and therefore should have no logical,
rational
reason for rejecting it). The idea is that the "challenge" that some relish
can be
provided, as I said, without "trashing" the underlying, reliable
communications
system.

You don't have to worry yourself about writing any simulators,
sophisticated contest simulator programs have been around for years,
all the predicatble parameters can be adjusted to suit the intensity
of the pileups, QSB, QRN, code speeds, whacky callsigns, helluva lotta
fun to play with. They also serve a very valuable role as contest
logger and computer station control traininmg wheels. In the end
they're neat electronic ping-pong games but IT AIN'T FRIGGING RADIO.
Nobody is gonna go play electronic ping-pong so that you and Coffman
can play band edge to band edge.

I *was* talking about RADIO ... a system that would communicate over
distances via radio ... just more reliably ... and THEN adding the
impariments
("challenge") at the receiving end to satisfy those who "like to dig the
weak
ones out of the noise/QRM."

transmit data reliably over transcontinental distances ... with power
outputs on the order of 10 mW ... as an "underlay" to existing services
that don't even notice that they are there.

Times how many stations?

Quite a few, but to be honest I don't know the exact number (and if I
did, I couldn't say).

QRPP PSK31 has done the same tricks. But PSK doesn't clobber the whole
band, doesn't require the development of new equipment, didn't require
a radical R&O to get on the air and can be done for the cost of some
audio cables at most ham stations.

I notice that TAPR has given up trying to get spread spectrum on the
air. Nobody in TAPR cares enough about SS to work thru the bugs.
There's a loud statement about ham SS.

IMHO, TAPR's SS effort was doomed from the start by being overly
complex.

Carl - wk3c