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

February 4th 04, 09:47 PM

(N2EY) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

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.

Some have amassed almost 80 countries on old-fashioned SSB, though. But that
was when we had some sunspots.

.. . . pfft . . !

Worn out transparent old smokescreen, all of it.

As is this "bandwidtj based frequency plan" thing. Note that it would
essentially
knock AM and NFM off much of amateur HF. Note also that besides drastically
widening the 'phone subbands, it cuts down the incentive to get an Extra.

It's just plain goofy. She's advocating a new structure to "fix" the
current structure which ain't broke.

So is the ARRL by the way. They have a committee beavering away on a
similar propsal which is even *worse* than Bonnie's.

Most of all, note the unsubstantiated statements like 'by 2010, 30% will be
Novice operators' and '80% of hams on HF radiate a medium bandwidth signal' and
such. Where do these numbers come from? No response.

What "Novices" with HF phone privs?? Mindless leap ahead. She's
playing ham politician but she's no good at the art.

One type of amateur HF wideband "experimentation" I know of is some folks
fooling around with "enhanced SSB", which is plain old SSB with the frequency
range widenend to up to 9 kHz. Some call it "single wideband".

That garbage is simply ssb with tweeters, "hi-fi ssb", as if. Has
nothing to do with wideband digital ops. This kind of nonsense
periodically comes and goes, there have been at least a couple passes
at "supermodulation" schemes. They silently died and nobody went to
the funerals.

There's also
some digital voice experimentation going on, but the added complexity doesn't
seem to give addded results. Yet.

The broadcasters have been putting an experimental 10 Khz wide AM mode
called "DRM"on the air for a year or so. Runs data, text & "hi-fi"
audio, no image or video so even at 10Khz wide it isn't a true
multimedia mode. Existing AM/FM, swl and ham rcvrs will not process
DRM signals without extensive mods and a 'puter *or* a
built-to-purpose rcvr the way I understand it. So as has usually been
the case with the introduction of innovations in recent decades the
commercials are already there at least on an experimental basis. It'll
be interesting to see how well DRM flies, it just might work well for
all I know but it's gotta survive the costs then the crud in the swl
bands.

To get anything like DRM running in the ham bands it'll have to
impress large numbers of hams enough on a performance basis to
convince them (us) to adopt a new mode which is completely
incompatible with the existing equipment hams use. Historically that
trick has never worked.

And to answer your question: Yes, you can put a voice signal (digitized)
through a 500 Hz pass band. You just need a modulation scheme meant for that
application, and the tradeoff will come in the form of needing a really good
S/N and/or more than real-time to send the message.

A requirement to have very good S/N ratios in the HF ham bands is two
strikes against a mode like this right out of the box. Dealing with
the realtime issue is probably survivable.

73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv