RadioBanter - View Single Post - We Need a BANDWIDTH-BASED Frequency Plan - NOT Mode-Based.

February 4th 04, 08:37 PM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(Len Over 21) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:

(Steve Robeson, K4CAP) wrote in message
.com...
(Brian Kelly) wrote in message
om...

There's virtually NO new-mode experimentation going on anywhere in any
ham bands. We have high bands where all sorts of "multimedia" wideband
ops are already quite legal. But all we hear is the talk, the walk
simply isn't happening. Why would it be any different on the HF
bands??

Usually this mantra pops up by some of the no code faction who
has tried to promote the idea that "experimenters" in new mode
technologies would somehow come out of the woodwork IF there was
no code test to keep them off of 20M phone.

Go figure!

It's been something like twelve years since the first of the piles of
nocodes hit the bands 30Mhz. Mayber it's happened and I missed it but
I have yet to see or hear of a single example of a nocode
experimenting with a new wide mode. For that matter none of the Extra
"wideband digigeeks"who have bleated the same refrain have done
anything but talk either.

Is PSK31 chopped liver? :-)

When did a 31 Hz wide mode become "wideband"?

Martinez' innovation comes from scaling current wideband data
communications at high rates to the slow, real-time rates of
amateur radio environments. That involved some good application
of Information Theory and other things, not in being spoon-fed
How To Do It from the pages of QST.

Maybe you don't recognize Peter Martinez, G3PLX?

I musta missed this one too, when did the FCC start passing out Extras
to Brits??

"Brits?" The FCC has no jurisdiction to citizen-residents of the
United Kingdom. Did you miss out on geography and civics
classes olde-tymer?

He was experimenting with polyphase shifting networks for SSB
back in 1973.

(a) When did bench-futzing SSB transmitter circuitry have anything to
do with putting a wideband signal on the air?

"Bench-futzing" (as you so quaintly put it in tuff-guy phillytalk) is
essentially necessary to test and confirm a concept in hardware
on the bench.

Since you are unaquainted with radio-electronics design work, I may
have to explain it further for your education. "Bench-futzing" is how
all your ready-made, designed-by-others radio toys get developed.
Those don't spring into existance the moment you wave a plastic
card around in an HRO.

Define "wideband."

The narrowbanders on HF have very old concepts of "wideband"
considering they inhabit rather narrowband pieces of spectrum and
thinking that voice bandwidths of maximum 3 KHz are "wide."

(b) When did SSB become "wideband"?

From Day One of SSB on radio. 12 KHz straight from Type C
Carrier equipment developed for Long Lines. Commercial. All
it needed was the RF end to replace the wires.

Militaries soon picked up on the commercial technique and ran
with that. Four voice-bandwidth channels over one transmitter.
Could easily handle eight TTY circuits and two voice circuits.
All on HF which "CW" (Conventional Wisdom) said couldn't be
done in 1990s even though it was running fine on HF in 1930s.

(c) You might note that phasing schemes for generating ssb signals
have about as much applicability to ham radio today as you have ever
had.

Not only generating them but receiving them, olde-tymer.

Do you recognize the name Dan Tayloe? U.S. Amateur Extra.
Inventor of the Tayloe Mixer, ideally applicable to direct-
conversion receivers with excellent unwanted sideband rejection
if used with a following four-quadrature-phase network. In terms
of your great life experience longevity, an invention that was fairly
recent.

If you bother to look around at the rest of the radio environment,
you might - if mental eyesight is still possible - see some startling
new developments in radio communications that happened in the
last half century. Even as you get red in the face reading this,
there are a hundred million little cellular telephones in use in just
the United States...little full-duplex HTs operating at about 1 GHz,
small enough to easily hold in one hand. Those didn't exist that
tiny, light, or as high in frequency three decades ago. Not an
amateur radio innovation yet it has become a part of worldwide
social culture.

Cordless telephones operate on up to the 5 GHz band now, are
priced affordable for most in consumer electronics stores. Almost
the size of cell phones and include caller ID while operating full-
duplex. You won't recognize the leap in frequency increase
because your radio world stops abruptly at 29.7 MHz and I doubt
you can envision the uniqueness of solid-state RF circuitry, up to
and including very high power solid-state that can be made
modular with hot-swapping replacement of modules while operating
(now the norm in high-power MF to UHF commercial transmitters).
None of it was an amateur radio innovation or invention.

You have, in the past, sneered and scoffed at automatic antenna
tuners yet Collins Radio designed that into the USMC-contract
T-195 that became operational in 1955. First widespread use of the
Bruene Detector for forward-reverse wave detection on HF. Hughes
Aircraft at a Ground Division designed the AN/PRC-104 for the U.S.
military, the basic manpack 20 W HF transceiver that featured an
automatic antenna tuner in a battery-powered rig, operational in
1986. It has higher-powered versions for vehicular installation, still
operational. Imagine that...auto antenna tuning in a portable unit!
Not an amateur radio innovation or invention.

There's still testing going on with digital modulation of short-wave
(HF spectrum) broadcasting but all indications are that it is a
success after four years of such tests. The "CW" (Conventional
Wisdom) pundits kept saying "it won't work, can't work on HF!"
even though it did. Takes no more bandwidth than conventional
AM yet offers more. All due to some innovation and invention by
the "bench-futzers" who applied various techniques and Information
Theory very cleverly. Several different ways are under investigation
as to which one is best on the air. Not from amateur radio.

A quarter million manpack and vehicular radios have been made
and fielded for 30 to 80 MHz use since 1989. Those feature 10
hops per second FHSS with digital voice or data and include
built-in encryption/decryption secure mode in real-time. New versions
are half the size of the old, the old being the same size/weight of
the PRC-104. Not from amateur radio.

The number of handheld transceivers and mobile radios at VHF
and higher in the commercial-government-military world easily
outnumbers those HTs used by amateurs on amateur bands. The
one reason that amateur VHF-and-up equipment is available at low
relative cost is that base market in the non-amateur radio field. Of
course your amateur world doesn't extend above above HF so that
isn't "real" amateur radio.

The Global Positioning Satellite System has become a reality, first
tested in airborne reception in 1971 as NAVSTAR. Now it is a
consumer item in electronics stores, useful to hikers, boaters,
vehicle drivers of many kinds, farmers, among many who don't intend
to drop big boom things (such as ICBMs) on nasties. It's also good
for super-accurate time reference since each of the 24 GPS sats
has a rubidium "atomic clock." Not an amateur radio development.

Speaking of accurate time, there's all sorts (over 30 brands) of "radio
clocks" in consumer electronic stores that update themselves auto-
matically to WWVB every day/night and display the results (including
calendar info) on LCDs. Battery powered, under $30 off-the-shelf.
Definitely not an amateur radio innovation-invention...very narrowband
at 1 Hz digital data rate. :-)

Amateurs nowadays have HF transceivers that display operating
frequency down to 10 Hz increments with "rock-solid" stability.
It is taken for granted as if it was always so, yet only a couple of
decades ago (slightly more) HF transceivers were of the VFO
variety without the most stable rocks in the box. Very few hams
have bothered to know anything but what the acronyms PLL and
DDS mean, couldn't describe the frequency control system if their
DXCC results depended on it. All brought about by commercial
designer "bench-futzes" working with microprocessors and micro-
controllers. May have been amateur radio related although such
frequency control was also incorporated in commercial HF radio
at the same market time.

Log-periodic antennas have been around for a half century, fine
for HF, extremely broadband, useful for when new HF ham bands
are allocated every quarter century or so (last big band increase
was in 1979, latest in 2003). Numerical Electromagnetic Code and
Method-of-Moments E-H Field Theory has been present for over a
dozen years yet amateurs aren't jumping at the chance to use such
computer programs to tailor them to their QTHs. Development
funded by the USN, source code is free.

Well, I have to stand corrected. There just isn't that much innovation
and invention IN amateur radio or BY amateur radio...and hasn't been
for about the last half century.

Sunnavagun!

You keep on beeping, Kellie, tawkin tuff, and praising hum radio
for raising the technical standards and leading the way in radio.
CW gets through when everything else will, therefore it needs to be
kept in the ham testing forever and ever.

LHA / WMD