Michael Coslo posted on Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:28:37 EST:

Steve Bonine wrote:

I didn't find any actual use in a contest, so such real-world experience
would be most interesting.

There is a new engine out there, of which I think Skimmer is using. I
have another program called MRP (something)that looks very similar. It
works very well indeed. It has that visual dot/dash display on a
horizontal waterfall, (also a big help) and the interesting thing is
that it seems to be doing something where it "looks behind" and will
sometimes correct itself as it goes along. I think that the software is
operating more akin to how humans decipher Morse.

Well, I'm not going to re-interpret how the
human brain works, but I think the operative
phrase is "adaptive re-programming" (more or
less). Some of that "adaptive" stuff has
been operating in sonar electronics for over
two decades. Sonar apparently used the first
"waterfall" displays to interpret sounds
under water...in order to separate 'fish
from foul' (so to speak) of all those low
frequency sounds.

I look at this new product as a very nice
peripheral to interpret on-off keying for
those of us who don't really care to bother
with audible on-off keying communications.
Since my human brain is highly adaptive to
visual input, I think of it as a good
adjunct to 'see' what PARTS of the [HF]
ham bands are doing. Also, radio contesting
has no personal interest to me so my
interest would only be in 'reading the mail'
to find out what is going on in the low
ends of the HF ham bands.

I have a fondness for electronics aids to
human senses and appreciate my Icom 746's
audio filtering. The old BFO in superhets
might be the very first 'aid' to hearing
on-off keying signals...compared to the
hiss and noise from old crystal sets!

The 746Pro also includes a little 5-level
('Baudot') teleprinter reader, apparently
included as an afterthought in Icom's
control system. A single line tiny display,
it isn't much, but their internal control
micros probably had enough program code
space to include it. Too bad (for me) that
Icom didn't also add the 8-bit ASCII TTY
decoder. :-)

Personally, I LIKE to see these new aids
to anything. About 35 years ago I got to
use the equivalent of VNAs for RF
measurement (HP Network Analyzer using
an ancient HP 16-bit minicomputer) at work
and thought it a FANTASTIC improvement
over the grunge-work manual measurement
on RF. Now I can get (if I want)
reasonably-low-priced VNAs (with precise
frequency control) from two amateur radio
companies and Antenna Analyzers (with
internal VNA) from at least six others.
Antenna Analyzers beat the heck out of
using a Noise Bridge and a scientific
calculator to interpret the Bridge reads
into meaningful complex quantities. :-)

73, Len AF6AY