On Jul 14, 3:10 pm, KC4UAI wrote:
On Jul 11, 8:44 pm, wrote:

Some time back, there was an article in QST called "The Man Who
Broke The Bank", about a ham who built an automated CW SS
station. He and it (mostly it) made a record score, which would not
be topped for many years.

The article appeared in QST for May, 1953.

I'll have to dig out the archives and see how he did that in 1953
without the benifit of your modern computer. I'll bet there was some
serious integration work that took place to make something like this
work that many years ago.

The article was fiction. At the time (a year before I was born!) it
must have seemed
really far-out. Today it's almost reality.

Point is, the *idea* isn't something new.

IMHO a line is drawn when operator intervention is no longer needed to
make a QSO. Another line is drawn when the op gets direct outside help
in making QSOs, such as by a packet cluster.

Personally, I think you have hit the division points the same places I
would. They are logical lines that are fairly easy to define. I
cannot get rid of the nagging thought that CW Skimmer (and things like
it) in some ways can blur these lines, but so can electronic logging
coupled with automatic keying, but I do like the simplicity of your
approach.

The thing about electronic logging, computer-generated keying driven
by
function keys and the like is that they still need operator
intervention to
work. Full automation does not.

But the Skimmer does not make QSOs. It simply tells you where stations
are that you may want to work.

Just like a packet cluster - which puts you in a different category.

Actually this is true right now, but it seems that it is only a short
step from where we are now (in terms of technology and automation) to
the sport becoming more of a "point and shoot" affair. CW Skimmer (or
things like it) could easily be made to check with your electronic
log, review the current contest's rules, review the signal strengths
of incoming signals then provide the operator a prioritized list of
who they should work next to maximize the probability of getting the
best score. Once you are at that point, it's a quick hop to removing
the operator from the cycle.

In fact, you don't need all of those features. All that's needed is
for the
system to be able to make QSOs by itself.

It may not do this yet, but from where we are to fully automated is
not that far. The hard part has been done.

Maybe. About 1950, Alan Turing himself thought that computers that
would pass
his hypothetical Turing Test of machine intelligence would be around
in less than 50
years.

Banning these tools from contests would also be a mistake.
It would be like banning transistors, or DSP signal
processing.

You'd be surprised what can be done on FD without either of
those things....

True, these things are not necessary for RF communications, but they
represent the "state of the art" in radio technology today.

Sort of.

Besides,
I'd hate to lug enough batteries around to get a 100W tube station on
the air in a parking lot.

Batteries? Parking lot?

I've done FD with tube gear, it's not that much harder than with
"modern" stuff.
The main difference is that the rigs tend to be bigger and heavier,
and you
need to know how to tune them up. All part of the game.

In 1995 I used the rig shown on my web page (google my call to see it)
on
Field Day in clas 1B-1. Antennas were an 80/40 inverted V with the
apex at 40 feet
on a homebrew wooden mast and a 20 meter ground plane vertical.
Paper logs, bug and straight keys. Power from a generator. All set up
in
a tent, on a homebrew portable table. Also had my 2 meter
rig for FM simplex QSOs. This was a solo operation - I brought
everything to the site, set up
all by myself, operated all 24 hours, took everything down and brought
it home. All of the
equipment and me in a 1980 VW Rabbit.

629 CW QSOs, 11 FM voice QSOs. Bonuses for 100% emergency power, W1AW
message, message to SM, and making 10 QSOs on VHF/UHF.

A lot of work but a lot of fun too. K0HB speaks of "a boy and his
radio" and that's
what it was. Wasn't the only time I did it, either.

It's been a long time since your average HF
rig for sale used Tubes, and even longer since they started using
transistors. Now the average HF rig is ripe with solid state
components and are digitally controlled. Try to tune your tube radio
with my laptop though software and you are going to have your hands
full, yet the average HF radio today is going to have DSP and computer
control ability.

Point is, it can be done, and a decent score earned. In a contest like
Field
Day, a lot of those features may not make a lot of difference in how
many
points you make.

There are some very high performance kits, though. And the rig
is only one part of the system; the antenna, location, conditions
and operator are all parts too.

And I would like to point out that we don't handicap stations for
antenna height, using a beam, where they are located (with some
exceptions) and stuff like that. How to set up a station to operate
effectively is an important part of operating. Antenna selection,
station grounding and things like feed line losses all play an
important part in the performance of a station, yet get ignored by the
rules. Doing a good job engineering these things is very important.
Having all the automation in the world won't help you if your station
doesn't work on the air in the first place.

That's very true! But here's the important point: The reverse is also
true. Sit an unskilled op down at the best station imaginable and
if s/he doesn't have the skills, the QSO rate will be very low.

In the case of Morse Code contesting, a person with no Morse Code
skills won't make any QSOs at all unless some form of code reader
and code generator are used.

But there comes a point in automation where the operator's skills
become
unnecessary and the machine does it alone or nearly so. Repeaters of
various
types are like that - the operator only intervenes to start and stop
it, not to make
QSOs.

I think true automatic operation is already not allowed, because there
must always be a control operator. I'm not sure, though.

Thinking about it; I think such a station *could* be legally set up
and operated. The question of how "in control" does the control
operator need to be is an interesting one. Surely a packet station is
legal and the control operator of a packet repeater doesn't see and
approve every transmission. Some are located in very remote locations
with no control operator sitting there all the time. PSK guys run
100% automated too, with their stations logging QSO's while they sleep
or work. How would what I describe be different?

For one thing, FCC limits such automatic operation to certain band
segments. More important, I don't think any contest now in existence
would give credit for such automated operation.

Note that contacts made through terrestrial repeaters are not counted
in any contest I know of.

I like your general approach. Don't ignore this new technology, but
also don't place too many regulations on its use. I also like how you
drew the lines because these lines are clearly understood.

Thanks!

In the long run we may need more categories, but that's the price of
increased complexity.

Here's another analogy: Chess competition.

There are now chess-playing software packages for your PC that can be
set to levels that are very difficult to beat. The very best chess-
playing computers ("Deep Blue", for example) may prove to be
unbeatable by *any* human, if they are not already that good.

But does that mean the person or team who writes the software is the
world's chess champion? If a machine is built that is truly
unbeatable, what would be the point of playing it? Should human chess
competiton be transformed into Machine A vs. Machine B?

IIRC, there was a dispute about a feature of Deep Blue's software. As
I recall, the software included an enormous library of games played
over many years. Part of what the software did was to compare the
present state of the board to those recorded games and determine
possible next moves from the successes of the past. It also avoided
possible disaster from the failures of the past. Its library of past
games was limited only by the ability of the humans to encode the
games into its memory. From what I recall, the dispute was that
allowing such a system was like allowing a human player to have a huge
chess book available while playing. So the issue isn't limited to ham
radio!

73 de Jim, N2EY