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"Mike Coslo" wrote in message ... Dan/W4NTI wrote: "an old friend" wrote in message oups.com... Dan/W4NTI wrote: Minor correction "John Smith". If the USA decided not to drop CW, it would NOT be alone in world. Russia and her ex Soviet Block nations have all decided to keep CW. and you WANT the US to keep such company Absolutely I want us to keep such company. Hows the old saying go? Keep your enemies close and your friends closer. It the other way around, Dan: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. But otherwise you are spot-on. Ideologies aside, there is one big difference between their country and ours. During WWII, they were brought to the brink of existence, and survival was not at all certain. That has perhaps changed their outlook on communications in extremis. Here, we "know" that in emergencies that we will use cell phones and the Internet, and all will be well. For some reason or other, they think that perhaps a time will come when technology can fail. Then whatchya got? - Mike KB3EIA - Naw, I like it my way...hi. That is my point Mike. Just because it is old....does not make it useless. I believe in the KISS method. And CW, in emergencies, is the easiest and simplest thing to get running. No modems, no regulated power supplies, no computers. Just the basic stuff. I was asked once by my Battalion commander while in the field in Germany. ( I was talking to the Feldburg 2m ham repeater while standing on top of the Command track). He asked how I could communicate with Frankfurt, and all of his radios could not......I said...."Well Sir, it takes two things to communicate.....an operator on both ends" He ordered me to take my H/T every time we went to the field from then on. Dan/W4NTI |
I still like it my way.
Dan/W4NTI "Dee Flint" wrote in message ... "Dan/W4NTI" wrote in message nk.net... "an old friend" wrote in message oups.com... Dan/W4NTI wrote: Minor correction "John Smith". If the USA decided not to drop CW, it would NOT be alone in world. Russia and her ex Soviet Block nations have all decided to keep CW. and you WANT the US to keep such company Absolutely I want us to keep such company. Hows the old saying go? Keep your enemies close and your friends closer. Dan/W4NTI Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Dee D. Flint, N8UZE |
robert casey wrote:
Gee, Len, BPL isn't supposed to be radio at all. Fill us in on the various intended BPL wireless propagation media. Those power lines are intended to be antennas? Maybe BPL is the answer to hams who can't put up HF antennas? :-) CQ BPL CQ BPL CQ BPL... Isn't that what a lot of the newsgroup is doing now? hehe I wonder why they have to have wireless routers and receivers (what frequency do they operate at?...) Around 2.4GHz or elsewhere in the microwave band. Kee-rect! Now I wonder why they don't put them at some other frequency, such as HF? Isn't there a HF segment somewhere around 27 MHz or so where they used to have cordless phones? Why not use that? I don't think there are any phones there now. Then let us modulate say a 1.8 MHz signal with say a 30 MHz signal. Aww heck. Why don't we use a quarter wave dipole for the antenna on this beast! ;^) Seems like if it is HF already, we shouldn't have to use them. I can see a little HF receiver hooked to my computer, and make a little antenna from what would ordinarily go into my Ethernet port. That should work, shouldn't it? - Mike KB3EIA - |
robert casey wrote:
John Smith wrote: Len: Phone lines are limited to roughly 38K by using the full audio bandwidth a phone line is filtered to, with the early compression techniques. 56K is obtained by improved data compression techniques. Any line capable of supporting transmission of these audio freaks can carry that much digital data (roughly +/-300hz to +/-5,000hz. DSL is obtained by pulling all the filters from the line, audio bandwidth is much expanded and much greater data can be crammed into that bandwidth, with even greater efficient compression techniques. Powerlines can support near/equal such bandwidths. With a bandwidth allowing freqs to climb into the LF RF freqs, tremendous data speeds are possible.... very localized interference to some rf freqs may be generated... this is now in a testing phase... Why this is so misunderstood is beyond explanation, or perhaps it is only limited to the older generations, for some unknown reason--as any familiar with technical details of data transmission methods and protocols should know this, it is very basic stuff... Only thing is that a DSL connection has a dedicated twisted pair of wires, but BPL you have to share with everyone else in town. Like cable modems, though the cable company cuts up their network so only a handful of users share. With BPL the entire towns' users have to share one channel. Now if you're the only user in town, you got it made (unless a ham fires up his linear...) NO linear needed! 5 Watts can do it. 100 watts is more than enough. The very most interesting thing about BPL is that what goes on the power lines is only the very last leg of the system. Power lines are not particularly good at carrying digital signals. The signal gets mushed up, and it won't survive the trip though the pole transformers. So they carry the signal through the higher voltage lines, put a box that pops the BPL signal onto the low voltage side of the transformer, then that is what goes into your house. But the big kicker is this. Since the digital signal has a lot of trouble surviving the trip on the power lines, fiber is run to the point where a tap is made to the HV-lines. It's a last block sort of thing. So unless you are on the end of the line, you will probably have a nice high-speed fiber going right past your place in a BPL scheme. THAT'S the signal I want Fiber! Not a stinking, degraded, vulnerable, spectrum polluting BPL signal. I want Fiber - lots of fiber in my diet! Besides, fiber is good for you! ;^) - Mike KB3EIA - |
Len:
Thanks for the background info... I have already written dave off as just another "yes man" to the status quo... he is a heckler here and his chief method of operation is character assassinations... rather than attack and debate ideas, he attacks posters... hey, the world is composed of all types, in the end it all works... John On Mon, 08 Aug 2005 12:28:34 -0700, LenAnderson wrote: From: John Smith on Sun 7 Aug 2005 23:42 Dave: I don't agree with bush on a lot, but don't want to focus on running for president either. Wasn't really happy with some teachers my son had, but didn't want to go full-time academic either. I really don't like the way the garbage men handle the trash, but refrain from that line of work also... Really, make sense, drop the BS and out-right crap... John Another small history lesson on the newsgroup for you, John: About 7 or 8 years ago, Obersturmbandsfuhrer Heil stormed in here making like the Authoritative Elmer of all Elmers, spouting off about "CW" is way so much better than RTTY and illustrating that with his saving-the-day actions from Guinea-Bisseau in Africa for the Department of State, his employer at the time (in the "foreign service"). That was in the 1980s. He was then, as he is now, an Ultimate Authority on HF from his many many years as a ham (probably working a minimum of 8 hours a day on his ham job) and waded into the morse code testing arguments as Mister Morseman (a "foreign service" counterpart to "Captain Code"). Unfamiliar with this country of Guinea-Bisseau, I had to look it up. Found out it was NOT a prosperous country and that its chief export was cashew nuts. I stated that and Heil got very angry. [he was a "key employee" or something at State as a "communications officer"...blah blah blah] How dare *I* question ANY statements of Heil's! :-) Heil got ****ed and a half when I recounted the HF comms done by the U.S. Army of the 1950s...using mainly RTTY and TTY over (commercial format) SSB...NOT encountering these "bad conditions" where "only 'CW' would get through" (and saving- the-day). Heil tried to make the argument that "CW" was "necessary" and all that old snit. Heil stated that "my station" (taxpayer owned, actually) "NEVER WORKED 24/7!" Tsk, four operating teams very certainly worked the 3rd largest Army station in ACAN-STARCOM then, using about 40 transmitters shooting across the Pacific south-east-west from Tokyo, all around the clock. NO "CW" (manual morse code) used by my battalion that served the Headquarters for the Far East Command then...none later...all on HF. Heil committed some small gaffes in his rationalizations on what he wrote...specifically that the "CW" was needed to "synchronize" the RTTY schedules. Any TTY is automatically self-synchronizeable, has been since before WW2 times. Heil then "explained" that "synchronizing" meant schedule times and so forth. Odd that such wouldn't have been worked out beforehand in operating orders, common to everyone else. Heil got most disturbed on my descriptions of the Army net being BIGGER than what State had (it was) and said "I didn't know anything about what State's radio had/did." Tsk, I did and already possessed a great deal of documentation obtained from Army sources and a few items of contractors supplying the U.S. government (the RCA "RACES" mass memory on mag cards, two of which were installed in DC at State's headquarters). Heil did not realize that some of the Department of State messages were actually carried on Army and Air Force communications circuits...more in Europe than in Asia. [I can identify the stations, the TTY ID, paths, and controlling hubs on all of ACAN-STARCOM from publicly-released information available before 1980, stuff that I have, obtained from a civilian engineer acquaintence who worked at "my" Army station] Heil engages in a lot of Gamesmanship in here, frequently citing his many State assignments (Finland, several countries in Africa). He WAS DX to a lot of other hams, courtesy of the U.S. government and complementary callsigns given to "diplomatic" personnel of the USA. Problem is, Department of State radio is rather smaller than the U.S. military networks and the retirees from State's radio are a tiny percentage of "radio operators." Now the military networks' former members are also a small percentage...but they are larger than civil government "radio operators." The more vocal hams with previous military radio experience seem to come from the USN and those mostly from ship "radio room" assignments. Heil seems to be banking on his Department of State experience being rare, thus he can bull**** his way into posing as a Great Authority on What The Government Does In Radio among amateur radio hobbyists. Heil shows no sign of having worked IN the larger military radio communications networks during his military service...yet he implies knowing all about them. He knows little and all he can do is the BS implication that he does. A shock to Heil must have been my appearance in here, an unlicensed-in-amateur-radio person who is no shrinking violet on opinions! Even worse, one who HAS documentary proof to counter most of the total bull**** spouted by this great "radio expert." [three such documents posted on http://kauko.hallikainen.org/history/equipment] Perhaps he was disturbed that I didn't polish the boots of his surplus Wehrmacht costume from Western Casting? Could be. Heil, like Robeson, vents a lot of anger in here, always trying to verbally thrash his "opponents" on a personal basis. SUBJECT be damned, he wants to "fight" on a one- to-one basis anyone who speaks against his opinions. In the last half year Heil has whittled a schtick about my "not being a participant in ham radio" etc. and thinks that is some kind of psywar "weapon." It isn't. Contrary to Fearless Leader's instruction-commands, I didn't get a ham license FIRST "to show an interest in radio." The Army provided the opportunity to INCREASE my interest in radio (since 1947 along with lots of other interests) and I "disobeyed orders" by getting a Commercial First Phone in 1956 and then became an electronics design engineer. No, no, no, that was NOT the Order Of The Day...I should have dutifully learned morsemanship to become an amateur first according to Fearless Leader Heil. Screum. USA 1st |
Conspiracy or just bad methods of record keeping?
.... in the end the reason is not as important as facts, and one fact is--dead hams are on the books... But damn it all and get real, the USA population is 350,000,000+, if just one percent of that population were hams, you would need 3.5 millons hams... .... the figure 600,000 is too ridiculous to even argue as meaningful, stop eating lotus flowers, wake up! John On Mon, 08 Aug 2005 10:24:49 -0400, Michael Coslo wrote: Dave Heil wrote: John Smith wrote: Dee: I differ with that figure, I think it is inflated about half, this is VERY apparent when tuning the bands... something is OBVIOUSLY wrong with that figure. I suspect it is like our "unemployment figure" here in the USA, that ONLY depicts those who are "drawing" unemployment, not those who have used up their unemployment, only worked part time and are not eligible, those who have given up on looking for work, etc... Those figures are "cooked" and those in the know--KNOW IT! John You purport to be an active radio amateur and you didn't even have a realistic idea of how many hams there are in the United States? Do you think the FCC and ARRL are in collusion and they've whipped up some massive coverup of the number of licensees? Sheesh! It is a conspiracy, Dave. The FCC is inflating the numbers of Hams for some reason, even though the conspiracists on the other side think they would like there to be *fewer* Hams, so that the FCC can have a good excuse to take away our band segments. Make sense? No? I think its related to Chemtrails somehow...... ;^) Finally, do some of these folks have some trouble with their antennas or something? When I tune our bands, I hear a *lot* of activity. And it isn't just on contest weekends. On those weekends the bands are wall to wall. Only open spots are around the Maritime nets, and it is wise to leave them some space. - Mike KB3EIA - |
N2EY:
.... any way you cut it, when you end all the obfuscation, BS and mindless chatter to divert thought, probably less that .015% of the population are licensed amateurs--that isn't insanity, that is a crime! Something is obviously wrong and yet you think you can argue insanely that this is good, fine and dandy and nothing is wrong--do you really think people that stupid? Only a hermit or recluse could be so blind... John On Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:42:41 -0700, N2EY wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: an old friend wrote: Dave Heil wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: Dave Heil wrote: We know pretty closely how many individuals there are with current (unexpired) FCC-issued amateur radio licenses - about 664,000 What we don't know is how many of those ~664,000 fall into the following categories: - Inactive due to being dead - Inactive due to being seriously sick or injured - Inactive due to loss of interest - Inactive due to lack of resources (time, money, space, etc.) - Slightly active - Moderately active - Very active Worse, the definitions of the last three categories are entirely subjective. If a ham is on the air 100 hours per year, is that ham slightly, moderately, or very active? How do other systems work? I suspect that they count licensees, and work with that. At renewal time, adjustments are made. Many other systems (like cb) require no license at all, so there's no good way to know how many users there are. The fact that a certain number of cb sets have been sold in the past X years tells nothing definite about how many cb users there really are. Same for stuff like FRS. OTOH most broadcast and commercial licenses require usage as a condition of grant. A broadcast station can (in theory) lose its license if it has too many avoidable outages. Of course the most prevalent use of two-way radio is the cell phone. The license, as it were, is held by the provider(s). Of course the users have almost no control over what the radio in a cell phone does. This approach has been in evidence early on. Facts are of secondary importance to opinion. To some folks, their opinions *are* facts. To too many..... So why bother with them? If we are told that there are not the number of hams claimed on the database, then that is the truth. If that means that the FCC is lying, that is the truth. No, it's just somebody's opinion. yup If we are told that the only thing needed to go digital on HF is to hook up that 56K modem to the rig, then that is the truth. Actually, you *can* hook up a 56K modem to your HF rig and "go digital". Doesn't mean it will work.... Note that almost all dialup modems have the ability to operate at less than 56K. Backwards compatibility and all that. Some will go all the way back to 300 baud. If we are told that Ham radio is dying, then that is true. Ham radio has always been "dying" - and always being reborn. Yeah, just like "The Family" Always under attack, always going downhill" and on and on. Reminds me of the radio ads for stores that are having their "Biggest Sale Ever!" The next week that are having another biggest sale ever. Seems if we just wait a short while, they'll be giving the stuff away, or paying us to take it away. "20th Annual Going Out Of Business Sale!" I was around back in 1968 when some folks said that 'incentive licensing' would 'kill amateur radio'. Those folks said it was completely unreasonable to expect or even ask the average ham to get an Advanced, let alone an Extra. Yet in the decade after those new requirements were put in place, the number of US hams grew from about 250,000 to about 350,000. And that was before the VE system and published question pools. Sure, some of that was helped by the Bash books, but there were no Bash books for 20 wpm Morse Code. Bash Keys??? HAW! The requirements were *raised* and ham radio *grew*....what a concept You can't argue with someone who makes up the facts as they go along, so why do it? Exactly! It is tough to beat an anonymous man with invisible sources for invisible facts. Yup. Like folks who claim that 57% is not a majority... they were just like, sayin' 8^) It's a classic troll trick. They make statements that are provably false just to get attention. Then they argue that what they say is true, or you didn't understand it, or you've been brainwashed by ARRL, etc. BTW, CQ has an article on HF digital transmission. Seems that they have got it all wrong too. They have a method that works, but it is pretty slow for images (or files) of any appreciable size. So send small files! Well, yeah! But if we are going to have a new mode, it needs to have some good features. They can be speed, quality, or even coolness (say the digital form of Hell-field) So here we have digital transmission in a sort of competition with SSTV. The images have to be pretty small, and most have to be compressed to the point that they are pretty poor compared to a good SSTV image. So the only advantage that I can see for this digital method is when the signal is weak and noisy. Then the digital image will be better. Of course the patience of Job will be needed for all the error correction needed Slow...error prone...not used by other services... HF will never be the place for high speed digital transmission. There is too much noise and signals are subject to the vagaries of wave propagation phenomena. A lot depends on what you mean by "high speed", and what resources you can use. If you're used to 45 baud RTTY, 1200 baud is high speed, isn't it? For example, if you're allowed to use wide-enough bandwidths, all sorts of stuff is possible. Sure. I think some people are believing that I am saying this is impossible. It is not impossible. But not very practical. I'd have to work it out, but I think there are some ham segments where we'd need more bandwidth than is alloted The difference is that unlike, say, the US Army in 1952, there is no High Command that determines who gets what frequencies for what path at what time. If you're allowed to use very high power and high gain antennas, all sorts of stuff is possible. A strong signal mode? 8^) Sure! Look at what the military folks did. Big rhombic and curtain arrays, etc. Find a suitable site, take it over as necessary for the military purpose, put up whatever is needed - on the taxpayer's dollars. If you need more power, just get it! Receivers like the R-390, costing thousands of 1950s dollars? How many racks of them are needed? Etc. Completely different from what most hams deal with. If you can separate the transmit and receive sites and/or frequencies so that full duplex is achieved, all sorts of things are possible. OY! Very common military and commercial practice. If your setup has adaptive features so that it evaluates the path characteristics and adapts the modulation and frequencies used to conditions, all sorts of things are possible. Doubly Oy! It's what ALE is all about. Of course most of the above is simply not practical for the average ham, and/or is incompatible with current US regulations. really? gee it falls into the same catagory as when it was said that we ham had been banished to "useless frequencies" everything above 200M Hams were never banished to everything above 200 meters. What happened was that amateur stations were required to use only wavelengths of 200 meters and below. But every station had a specified wavelength. If a ham wanted to use, say, 159 meters, s/he needed a station license that said "159 meters". In 1912 there wasn't much known about how HF propagation actually worked. The 'useless' idea came from extrapolation of what happened on longer wavelengths. The ionosphere's role was not even guessed at by "professionals in radio". There are some pretty darn good reasons why high-speed digital HF won't work well. And they aren't related to early "knowledge" that caused hams to be relegated to those higher frequencies at the time. Radio is a fairly mature field, and digital is getting there. Many people have a pretty good idea what will likely work, based on education and experience. And HF is an unruly beast, given to noisy and incredibly variable conditions. We don't have to be rocket scientists to gain that knowledge. Just as an exercise, how much information can be carried by a 1.8 MHz signal? How much error correction will be needed during the summer, and how much during the winter? Why is there a difference? Why would a wireless digital transmission system use UHF and above for data transmission? All very good questions! when was that Jim A long, long time ago. When almost nothing was known about propagation. Jim might note that they do some bandwidth tricks in similar manner as he proposed per our conversation in here earlier. Not exact, but along the same lines Hopefully we will see an article from those who know the right way to HF digital soon. 8^) I don't have my CQ handy, but it took them a fair amount of time (measured in minutes IIRC, to transmit some heavily compressed (beyond maximum jpeg compression), and therefore really poor quality (by almost everyones standard) pictures. Didn't I make a challenge with some of the HF high-speed digital believers in here to do a sked? I think the "answer" was that I was going to steal the technology. You can't steal vaporware. Not that that is likely, but how about say some of the believers among themselves, do a proof of performance of the technology? Or is this just one of those Wondertenna type ideas that crop up from time to time, only to be found lacking when introduced into the real world? Heck, Mike, you want *practical* stuff? You betchya! Don't expect it from "John Smith", Len, "b.b.", or even "an old friend". You won't get it. They're not about actually *doing* ham radio, just arguing about it. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: an old friend wrote: Dave Heil wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: Dave Heil wrote: Of course the patience of Job will be needed for all the error correction needed Slow...error prone...not used by other services... Where'd I hear that before? ;^) HF will never be the place for high speed digital transmission. There is too much noise and signals are subject to the vagaries of wave propagation phenomena. A lot depends on what you mean by "high speed", and what resources you can use. If you're used to 45 baud RTTY, 1200 baud is high speed, isn't it? For example, if you're allowed to use wide-enough bandwidths, all sorts of stuff is possible. Sure. I think some people are believing that I am saying this is impossible. It is not impossible. But not very practical. I'd have to work it out, but I think there are some ham segments where we'd need more bandwidth than is alloted The difference is that unlike, say, the US Army in 1952, there is no High Command that determines who gets what frequencies for what path at what time. If you're allowed to use very high power and high gain antennas, all sorts of stuff is possible. A strong signal mode? 8^) Sure - that's predictable by Shannon's. It's not hard to understand and explain, if you really understand what Shannon is all about. (Some folks make a lot of noise about it, acting as if it's some big deal, but it's really quite easy to understand.) Consider this situation: Plain old on-off keying lets you send one unit of information per unit time. Either a 1 or a 0, on or off. Digital and all that. But suppose we have a system (transmitter, receiver and connection between them)that has four states - 100% on, 66% on, 33% on, and off (0% on). We can then apply a meaning to those four states - say, 11, 10, 01, and 00, respectively - and send two units of information per unit time in the *same* bandwidth. We've just doubled the data rate without changing the modulation method, bandwidth, or basic keying rate. But for it to work, the system must have good enough signal-to-noise ratio to determine the four states reliably. That principle can be continued as far as our signal-to-noise ratio allows. For example, a system of 128 states could be done, if the system S/N is good enough, allowing the transmission of seven units of information per unit time in the same bandwidth as was previously used for one unit. IIRC we had this conversation before, only it was about a PSK system with many more states, rather than an AMK system. And there's no reason multiple carriers can't be used, as well as multiple ways of modulating the same carrier - say phase and amplitude modulation at the same time. Of course the entire system has to have adequate s/n to deal with the tiny variations of phase and amplitude. Telephone line modems make use of the predictable stability and characteristics of the telephone lines. HF radio is a bit less stable. Of course if the taxpayers are footing the bill, all sorts of things can be done. Sure! Look at what the military folks did. Big rhombic and curtain arrays, etc. Find a suitable site, take it over as necessary for the military purpose, put up whatever is needed - on the taxpayer's dollars. If you need more power, just get it! Receivers like the R-390, costing thousands of 1950s dollars? How many racks of them are needed? Etc. Completely different from what most hams deal with. If you can separate the transmit and receive sites and/or frequencies so that full duplex is achieved, all sorts of things are possible. OY! Very common military and commercial practice. If your setup has adaptive features so that it evaluates the path characteristics and adapts the modulation and frequencies used to conditions, all sorts of things are possible. Doubly Oy! It's what ALE is all about. Just not too applicable for our purposes. My Elecraft K2 has programmable memories that can be set for each band and mode. Other rigs have similar features. It would not be difficult to have it step through them (using the RS-232 port and computer control) comparing each frequency with the others. With suitable time synchronization between, say, you and I, the rigs could step through the various preprogrammed QRGs, looking for the spot with the best propagation and no QRM. Of course we'd have to set it all up beforehand so we'd - or rather the rigs - would know precisely where to send and listen. The K2's ATU also remembers antenna tuner settings per memory. Of course most of the above is simply not practical for the average ham, and/or is incompatible with current US regulations. really? gee it falls into the same catagory as when it was said that we ham had been banished to "useless frequencies" everything above 200M Hams were never banished to everything above 200 meters. What happened was that amateur stations were required to use only wavelengths of 200 meters and below. But every station had a specified wavelength. If a ham wanted to use, say, 159 meters, s/he needed a station license that said "159 meters". In 1912 there wasn't much known about how HF propagation actually worked. The 'useless' idea came from extrapolation of what happened on longer wavelengths. The ionosphere's role was not even guessed at by "professionals in radio". There are some pretty darn good reasons why high-speed digital HF won't work well. And they aren't related to early "knowledge" that caused hams to be relegated to those higher frequencies at the time. Radio is a fairly mature field, and digital is getting there. Many people have a pretty good idea what will likely work, based on education and experience. And HF is an unruly beast, given to noisy and incredibly variable conditions. We don't have to be rocket scientists to gain that knowledge. Just as an exercise, how much information can be carried by a 1.8 MHz signal? As much as the S/N allows! See above. How much error correction will be needed during the summer, and how much during the winter? Why is there a difference? Why would a wireless digital transmission system use UHF and above for data transmission? All very good questions! when was that Jim A long, long time ago. When almost nothing was known about propagation. Jim might note that they do some bandwidth tricks in similar manner as he proposed per our conversation in here earlier. Not exact, but along the same lines Hopefully we will see an article from those who know the right way to HF digital soon. 8^) I don't have my CQ handy, but it took them a fair amount of time (measured in minutes IIRC, to transmit some heavily compressed (beyond maximum jpeg compression), and therefore really poor quality (by almost everyones standard) pictures. Didn't I make a challenge with some of the HF high-speed digital believers in here to do a sked? I think the "answer" was that I was going to steal the technology. You can't steal vaporware. Not that that is likely, but how about say some of the believers among themselves, do a proof of performance of the technology? Or is this just one of those Wondertenna type ideas that crop up from time to time, only to be found lacking when introduced into the real world? Heck, Mike, you want *practical* stuff? You betchya! I have to note that we speak of actual systems, real world devices - some of which are yet to be made of course, but practicalities (granted you much more than myself - but I am an RF neophyte, having come from the digital world) Others seem to be more in the vein of "so there! or someone is going to come along and prove you naysayers wrong!" mode. Bingo. Faith based electronics. Yes - those who dare to even like modes such as Morse Code are cursed as infidels who do not understand the Word that "newer is always better" and "the PROFESSIONALS know best" I wonder how that tremendous antenna from the UofD is coming along? You know, the one that is going to revolutionize radio? HF antennas a few feet long that outperform anything we have today. The one that was so "efficient" that it melted when the inventor powered it with 100 watts. And I'm not the one who used the word efficient, *they* did. It *is* efficient, Mike! It's very efficient at turning HF RF energy into heat. Don't expect it from "John Smith", Len, "b.b.", or even "an old friend". You won't get it. And I'm starting to think that some of them might be duplicates anyhow. Quitefine and Darkguard (nee Blackguard) indeed! Doesn't matter - they have nothing practical to offer. They're not about actually *doing* ham radio, just arguing about it. Too bad they cant do a better job. Indeed 73 de Jim, N2EY |
N2EY:
Text, with data compaction, is about a 10:1 compaction ratio (I usually average a 12:1 over a broad time period), that translates into sending one word for every 10, or 10X the speed of sending the data un-compacted. John On Mon, 08 Aug 2005 18:02:10 -0700, N2EY wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: an old friend wrote: Dave Heil wrote: Mike Coslo wrote: Dave Heil wrote: Of course the patience of Job will be needed for all the error correction needed Slow...error prone...not used by other services... Where'd I hear that before? ;^) HF will never be the place for high speed digital transmission. There is too much noise and signals are subject to the vagaries of wave propagation phenomena. A lot depends on what you mean by "high speed", and what resources you can use. If you're used to 45 baud RTTY, 1200 baud is high speed, isn't it? For example, if you're allowed to use wide-enough bandwidths, all sorts of stuff is possible. Sure. I think some people are believing that I am saying this is impossible. It is not impossible. But not very practical. I'd have to work it out, but I think there are some ham segments where we'd need more bandwidth than is alloted The difference is that unlike, say, the US Army in 1952, there is no High Command that determines who gets what frequencies for what path at what time. If you're allowed to use very high power and high gain antennas, all sorts of stuff is possible. A strong signal mode? 8^) Sure - that's predictable by Shannon's. It's not hard to understand and explain, if you really understand what Shannon is all about. (Some folks make a lot of noise about it, acting as if it's some big deal, but it's really quite easy to understand.) Consider this situation: Plain old on-off keying lets you send one unit of information per unit time. Either a 1 or a 0, on or off. Digital and all that. But suppose we have a system (transmitter, receiver and connection between them)that has four states - 100% on, 66% on, 33% on, and off (0% on). We can then apply a meaning to those four states - say, 11, 10, 01, and 00, respectively - and send two units of information per unit time in the *same* bandwidth. We've just doubled the data rate without changing the modulation method, bandwidth, or basic keying rate. But for it to work, the system must have good enough signal-to-noise ratio to determine the four states reliably. That principle can be continued as far as our signal-to-noise ratio allows. For example, a system of 128 states could be done, if the system S/N is good enough, allowing the transmission of seven units of information per unit time in the same bandwidth as was previously used for one unit. IIRC we had this conversation before, only it was about a PSK system with many more states, rather than an AMK system. And there's no reason multiple carriers can't be used, as well as multiple ways of modulating the same carrier - say phase and amplitude modulation at the same time. Of course the entire system has to have adequate s/n to deal with the tiny variations of phase and amplitude. Telephone line modems make use of the predictable stability and characteristics of the telephone lines. HF radio is a bit less stable. Of course if the taxpayers are footing the bill, all sorts of things can be done. Sure! Look at what the military folks did. Big rhombic and curtain arrays, etc. Find a suitable site, take it over as necessary for the military purpose, put up whatever is needed - on the taxpayer's dollars. If you need more power, just get it! Receivers like the R-390, costing thousands of 1950s dollars? How many racks of them are needed? Etc. Completely different from what most hams deal with. If you can separate the transmit and receive sites and/or frequencies so that full duplex is achieved, all sorts of things are possible. OY! Very common military and commercial practice. If your setup has adaptive features so that it evaluates the path characteristics and adapts the modulation and frequencies used to conditions, all sorts of things are possible. Doubly Oy! It's what ALE is all about. Just not too applicable for our purposes. My Elecraft K2 has programmable memories that can be set for each band and mode. Other rigs have similar features. It would not be difficult to have it step through them (using the RS-232 port and computer control) comparing each frequency with the others. With suitable time synchronization between, say, you and I, the rigs could step through the various preprogrammed QRGs, looking for the spot with the best propagation and no QRM. Of course we'd have to set it all up beforehand so we'd - or rather the rigs - would know precisely where to send and listen. The K2's ATU also remembers antenna tuner settings per memory. Of course most of the above is simply not practical for the average ham, and/or is incompatible with current US regulations. really? gee it falls into the same catagory as when it was said that we ham had been banished to "useless frequencies" everything above 200M Hams were never banished to everything above 200 meters. What happened was that amateur stations were required to use only wavelengths of 200 meters and below. But every station had a specified wavelength. If a ham wanted to use, say, 159 meters, s/he needed a station license that said "159 meters". In 1912 there wasn't much known about how HF propagation actually worked. The 'useless' idea came from extrapolation of what happened on longer wavelengths. The ionosphere's role was not even guessed at by "professionals in radio". There are some pretty darn good reasons why high-speed digital HF won't work well. And they aren't related to early "knowledge" that caused hams to be relegated to those higher frequencies at the time. Radio is a fairly mature field, and digital is getting there. Many people have a pretty good idea what will likely work, based on education and experience. And HF is an unruly beast, given to noisy and incredibly variable conditions. We don't have to be rocket scientists to gain that knowledge. Just as an exercise, how much information can be carried by a 1.8 MHz signal? As much as the S/N allows! See above. How much error correction will be needed during the summer, and how much during the winter? Why is there a difference? Why would a wireless digital transmission system use UHF and above for data transmission? All very good questions! when was that Jim A long, long time ago. When almost nothing was known about propagation. Jim might note that they do some bandwidth tricks in similar manner as he proposed per our conversation in here earlier. Not exact, but along the same lines Hopefully we will see an article from those who know the right way to HF digital soon. 8^) I don't have my CQ handy, but it took them a fair amount of time (measured in minutes IIRC, to transmit some heavily compressed (beyond maximum jpeg compression), and therefore really poor quality (by almost everyones standard) pictures. Didn't I make a challenge with some of the HF high-speed digital believers in here to do a sked? I think the "answer" was that I was going to steal the technology. You can't steal vaporware. Not that that is likely, but how about say some of the believers among themselves, do a proof of performance of the technology? Or is this just one of those Wondertenna type ideas that crop up from time to time, only to be found lacking when introduced into the real world? Heck, Mike, you want *practical* stuff? You betchya! I have to note that we speak of actual systems, real world devices - some of which are yet to be made of course, but practicalities (granted you much more than myself - but I am an RF neophyte, having come from the digital world) Others seem to be more in the vein of "so there! or someone is going to come along and prove you naysayers wrong!" mode. Bingo. Faith based electronics. Yes - those who dare to even like modes such as Morse Code are cursed as infidels who do not understand the Word that "newer is always better" and "the PROFESSIONALS know best" I wonder how that tremendous antenna from the UofD is coming along? You know, the one that is going to revolutionize radio? HF antennas a few feet long that outperform anything we have today. The one that was so "efficient" that it melted when the inventor powered it with 100 watts. And I'm not the one who used the word efficient, *they* did. It *is* efficient, Mike! It's very efficient at turning HF RF energy into heat. Don't expect it from "John Smith", Len, "b.b.", or even "an old friend". You won't get it. And I'm starting to think that some of them might be duplicates anyhow. Quitefine and Darkguard (nee Blackguard) indeed! Doesn't matter - they have nothing practical to offer. They're not about actually *doing* ham radio, just arguing about it. Too bad they cant do a better job. Indeed 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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