On 16 Jul 2003 05:23:30 -0700, Brian wrote:

Well who do you think ruled India during the Raj? I'm not proud of it, but
it does give us a certain common heritage.

Who do you think may have rules America prior to our independance?

According to a colleague of mine, the Cherokees.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

On 16 Jul 2003 03:06:13 GMT, Alun Palmer wrote:

Well, here's an idea. Should you find later that you need to learn about
something, have you ever heard of books? I find them very useful.

How long does one have to read the book to learn how to play the
piano?

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

On 16 Jul 2003 14:28:18 GMT, Alun Palmer wrote:

I had to read it a few times. I think the reason for poor performance in
UK engineering has nothing to do with the quality of UK engineers and
everything to do with the culture of UK companies, in which the engineers
are not in charge, but instead the accountants are.

If you don't think that that is the case "over here" too, you have
not been paying attention to how Corporate America is being run.

And this is not
because we don't study business subjects (we do), or because we don't do
English or History or 'Western Civilisation' in college (the accountants
don't either).

In other words, your "professional education" is basically trade school
programs.

What a waste.

As I understand it (and I freely admit there are gaps in my knowledge of
your system), you can get a 4-year degree over here with 120 (?) semester-
hours of credit, and maybe only half of it has to be in your major (?).
When I sat down and tried to calculate it (from old timetables, since
there are no hours on my transcript, only grades) my 3-year UK degree
included about 150 semester-hours of classroom time, of which about 120
semester hours was in engineering subjects, the rest being things like
economics, finance, mathematics, etc.

IIRC my BEE degree was more like 180 hours (4 years of 20-credit
semesters plus one summer of Surveying -- did you take that by any
chance? It came in real handy when I built my first house and when
I studied Real Estate Law in law school and when I discuss or plot
radio path and contour calculations or directional antenna patterns
with clients or even map-reading and "orienteering" with non-technical
hiking friends and relatives.

No chemistry in an engineering program? This is not the same as a
Literature or Cultural Humasnitiers course. This is basic science.

In an EE program we took a year of chemistry (class and lab), two
years of physics, one year of advanced math, and assorted courses in
non-EE engineering subjects such as thermodynamics, mechanics of
materials, atomic physics, and surveying, plus our rigorous EE power
and electronics courses.

That was 50 years ago. Now they require a lot more of "non-EE"
stuff such as environmental engineering and medical engineering
The school has acquired a reputation for application research in
those fields.

Otherwise one is not a rell-educated engineer - one is a geek with a
degree.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

(Brian Kelly) wrote in message . com...
"Carl R. Stevenson" wrote in message ...
"Brian Kelly" wrote in message
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.

That's not my recollection at all but for absolute certain any type of
HF SS would require some bandwidth far in excess of the bandwidths
currently permissable under the regs or acceptable by the users of the
so-called legacy modes on HF. The inherent bandwidth characteristic of
SS has made it destructively non-compatible with the modes currently
in use in HF ham bands. Ain't gonna happen in our lifetimes, ham HF SS
is a non-sequiter.

The really important question is simply "how would such a system be
implemented?" IOW, who is going to develop it, set the standards,
build the equipment, put the stations on the air, etc.? I can imagine
all sorts of really neat systems I'd like to see (say, a
highspeed/"wideband" microwave digital network linking major cities
via ham radio, over which hams could have all sorts of QSOs through
local portals) but who is gonna put up the bux and do the work? I
don't see Carl, Vipul, Gary or anybody else stepping up to take on
even a piece of it.

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?

See above. Somebody has to actually DO it. Not just talk about it.

Lookit G3PLX and PSK-31. Guy developed an idea, worked on it for
years, recruited knowledgeable hams around the world for tests. One of
whom is a really sharp local Ph.D EE ham known to both W3RV and me.
When the bugs were worked out, they just gave it away to the ham
community - free software, step-by-step articles on how to connect
your lapper to your rig, excellent articles on how it works and why.

Once it was public, other hams got involved in software improvements,
purpose-built rigs like the Warbler, demos, more articles, books, etc.
Now mainstream "PSK-31 ready" rigs are beginning to show up on the
amateur market.

How many years and how many hours and how many
dollars/pounds/lira/shekels, all of it donated, went into the
development of PSK-31?

... 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).

Your term IF is the Achilles heel of your whole argument.

Right. There's no way it will look exactly like the real thing.

Kinda like the idea of having athletes all over the world run the
Boston Marathon on computerized treadmills surrounded by
high-definition TVs, with automated weather simulation (heat, rain,
wind, etc.) They're all covering the same distance under the same
conditions, right? No need to close all those roads and deal with all
the headaches of a real road race, right? And lots more people will be
able to participate, without all the hassle of getting to Boston and
back, qualifying for the race, etc.

We've been
down this road, i.e., the problem with logical/rational being the
primanry drivers in ham radio. Ham radio is not a commercial service
where logic is the driver. The standard issue ham is into ham radio
for it's recreational value and the rest flows from there.

I gotta disagree here. Ham radio is driven by as much "logic" as any
other radio service - often much more. But the driving forces are
different. Take military comms - they want very high accuracy, very
high security, very high speed, very high reliability. Size, weight
and power consumption considerations vary all over the place from
"doesn't matter too much" to "gotta be kept to absolute minimum". Cost
and complexity are way, way, way down on the list. "Fun" isn't on the
list at all. Radio is just a comms tool to the military folks - if
something 'better' comes along tomorrow, they'll be all over it.

Which is where those surplus 55-75 foot tubular-section towers we've
used on FD came from. They were originally meant for terrestrial
microwave. You know what they cost the ham who wants one. You don't
wanna know what Uncle paid for 'em. Ya think Uncle really cared what
the resale value of those towers would be?

For hams, the top of the list is almost always "FUN". High on the list
are cost, size, complexity, required maintenance, ease of use, useful
life, resale value, etc. But FUN is the biggie, and if it ain't fun
according to the perception of the "user", there ain't gonna be no
users. And each user has his/her own definition of "FUN".

Pretty logical system, really.

Heck, the whole anti-code-test argument comes down to "why require
folks to learn something that they don't think will be fun to do?" and
"the people who see it as fun will learn it without a test".

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."

And by doing so you miss the whole point of what makes it fun in the
first place: the fact that it's real and not a simulation.

Then you better find a like-minded programmer who has extensive
real-world actual experience with weak-signal DXing and contesting CW
and otherwise to write the code. You sure as hell are not qualified to
do that.

I dunno, maybe Carl and Gary are able to do it. But will they? Don't
hold yer breath. Classic 'tie the bell on the cat' situation. See
above PSK-31 story.

You're snapping around the edges of needing AI to pull off any such
code. We all know how easy that is (?!). IBM has a well-funded crew of
their comp sci & math geniuses and a mainfarme dedicated to
periodically trying to beat one human chess player's brain. And chess
is just a two-dimensional board game with rigid rules of play which
allows large chunks of time to make the decisions on each move.

The system they use also "cheats" in a way, in that it has an enormous
library of games that have been played before accessible. It can look
at a particular board position and check if that particular position
ever came up in any recorded game before, then see what was done and
how it came out.

Does the computer have "fun" playing? Just ask it.

HF CW
contesting in particular has more dimensions than I can even start to
count and decsions are routinely made several times a second. Just for
openers. How ya gonna do it Carl? A bit of C++ and VB in a ham shack
PC? Yeah, right. Not even a decent pipe dream.

Heck, just network everybody's computer together and we can run a
virtual contest whenever we want. No need for towers, amplifiers, etc.
Set up any virtual station you want.

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.

Do the services who "don't know they are there" know what to look for?
Or do they just think their noise floor is a little higher?

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).

Bullet = Ducked

Speaking of which, consider how many CW QSOs at 40 wpm could fit in
that 150 kHz of 20 meters. At least 300 without interference, meaning
at least 600 hams on the air in that space without frequency re-use.
And that's using really simple, dirt-cheap equipment like the receiver
I built almost 30 years ago whose pictures are now on the HBR site.

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.

Complex compared to what? More complex than a PC? Or was there too
much talk and too little action?

Maybe it was a solution in search of a problem.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Dick Carroll wrote in message ...
Brian wrote:


(like ol' CW loving me) have been doing WEFAX for a couple decades, at least. Or were, until the HF
stations went off the air.
Now I just go to a website and bring it up on the screen. Pfft.

ur still a dud.

Eminently ignorable man child. They happen.

Alun Palmer wrote in message . ..
Dave Heil wrote in
:

Alun Palmer wrote:

Mike Coslo wrote in
:

You must be related to our friend Vipul! At least you think
alike.

- Mike KB3EIA -



Well, he's clearly Indian,

That isn't clear at all.

and I'm British, so it wouldn't surprise me if we share some views in
common and don't buy into the received wisdom of the US of A.

That wouldn't surprise me either but both of you seem to prefer feeding
at the American trough.

Dave K8MN


In this economy it's less of a trough and more of a small dish

There are alternatives. Just the other day my neighbor commented that
he was considering a move to Pakistan or India for the opportunity to
build a better life for himself and his family. ;^)

Larry Roll K3LT wrote:

And unlike yours, most of those opinions are being made by people with
genuine operating experience. Sorry about the truth, Kim -- I know it
hurts you, but I'm not going to look at a pile of crap on the floor and call
it a bowl of cherries.


I'm almost afraid to ask what your last meal was before your procedure,
Larry!! 8^)

Glad it went well, tho'.

- Mike KB3EIA -

"Ryan, KC8PMX" wrote in message
...

"Dee D. Flint" wrote in message
y.com...

"Ryan, KC8PMX" wrote in message
...
How about a different parallel?? Drivers licenses! How many here have
earned ALL endorsements/license classes for their drivers license?
i.e.
motorcycle operators permit etc.

Those that haven't must just be lazy too eh?

Not a valid comparison the way you put it. If the person isn't
interested
in the privileges, it doesn't mean he is lazy for not getting the
endorsement. It's the person who wants the privileges and isn't willing
to
get the endorsement that would be considered lazy.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE


I disagree based on statements made by others here before. Having both HF
and VHF+ access to all of the amateur radio spectrum (i.e. upgrading all
the
way to extra) is so important to some, then the parallel is there. Not
exercising the full advantages of the license.

Somehow I think you are misunderstanding my point of view. If they do not
wish to exercise the privileges that come with an upgrade, then there is no
need to upgrade and that's fine with me. It's those who want the privileges
and whine about having to do the work to get them that bother me.


I have had 2 CSCE's now for the morse code test, and let both of them slip
as I see no need exercise the use of those privileges, nor can I at this
point due to operational limitations. But apparently upgrades are even
more
important to some here more than god.


Again, no one has a problem with a person who prefers not to upgrade and
explores those areas for which he/she is licensed. The problem arises when
someone wants the upgrade privileges without the upgrade work.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

"Carl R. Stevenson" wrote in message ...


Hey Carl, refresh me, how many "channels" to we have on 20M? Once a
Tech always Tech huh?

{Decorum off}
Bite me.
{Decorum back on}

I love it when you talk dirty Carl.

"Channel impariments" refer to the "propagation channel" and if you
had an idea of where to beg, borrow, rent, or steal a clue you'd
know that ... but then again, it's a technical term ... I guess I shouldn't
expect that you would be familiar with it ...

I know exactly what a channel is. Lotta people have made the mistake
of underestimating what I actually know Carl.


I'll tellya what the average contester's response to your basic
concept would be: "Why would I go thru all these computer pushups when
all I have to do is fire up my radios and get on the air and have the
real thing?"

Is loading a program onto your PC such a difficult thing for you?
Poor fellow.

No Carl, I'm actually quite adept at loading software. I'm also quite
adept at getting on the air without needing a computer which I much
prefer unless I want to run RTTY or PSK/MSK.

The idea is to provide the same user experience in terms of noise,
fading, static, QRM, etc. WITHOUT actually trashing the band
in a way that precludes other uses at the same time.

Yeah, uh-huh. Everybody give up real-time on-the-air interaction with
the natural vagaries of propagation, interferences and "unprocessed"
direct contact with other humans and climb into their Winboxes and
play computer games while Stevenson & Coffman Inc. trash the bands
their way.

No even after pigs learn to fly Carl.

Don't take my word for any of it Carl. Request the NPRM and see what
happens. Oughta be a piece of cake for you since you know all them
guys.

As far as "reliable and robust" is concerned if I need both or either
all I have to do is dial into Ma Bell's system or log in via my ISP.
Who needs your "help" if that's all I want?

And when you need that reliability and robustness for emergency comms
and conditions are poor? Oh, yea, you rely on Morse ... despite the
fact that there are alternatives that are "better" (as defined in my reply
to Jim) ... how quaint.

Bull****. When were the last three times any hams handled or tried to
handle any serious emergency over a difficult HF path with any mode?
"Reliability and robustness for emergency comms" is about the weakest
justification for your "system" I can imagine.

I suspect that I could shred your system reliability claims with a few
keystrokes in Mathcad by simply running a system parts count vs.
reliability analysis. How many parts are there in a laptop anyway?

I'm not into RACES and never stated that I was. But I have passed more
third party long-haul H&W traffic than you'll ever manage to do and
every bit of it was via SSB. Plus I've passed a bit of minor emergency
traffic via vhf FM.

I have two charged & ready to roll 2M 5w HTs with gain antennas right
here Carl and a couple 50w 2M mobile rigs. I can toss either in the
car and have it on the air in a minute or two. If things get really
nasty I also have an HF mobile rig I can also "deploy" in the car. And
I don't need a computer to do any of it. Everybody knows that only
place in the ham bands you'll likely run into a real emergency is on
2M and I'm good to go right now while you're still "planning" some
grandiose homebrewed Lehigh County EOC. Not that I expect that to
actually happen of course.


Carl - wk3c

w3rv

Phil Kane wrote:
On 16 Jul 2003 03:06:13 GMT, Alun Palmer wrote:


Well, here's an idea. Should you find later that you need to learn about
something, have you ever heard of books? I find them very useful.


How long does one have to read the book to learn how to play the
piano?


Game, set, match, Phil......


- Mike KB3EIA -