From: Dee Flint on Aug 30, 7:00 pm

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
wrote in message

CW is not the narrowest bandwidth mode; currently, psk-31 is. With
something like a 32 Hz bandwidth, cw pales in comparison with its' 100 to
200 Hz bandwidth.

However CW is the lowest power consumption mode. All the other digital
modes require a computer and monitor.

Tsk, tsk, BAD engineer! Go sit in the corner cubicle with Wally.

No, "all the other digital modes" do NOT need a full-on PC.

It is COMMON to use a full-on PC because that is the SIMPLEST
solution to implementing such mode...and because so few
manufacturers have designed and made stand-alone equipment
for some digital modes.

One example that was withdrawn from kit production was the
DZ Engineering "PSKube," a stand-alone PSK31 transceiver. Full
manual and details, photos, are available at the DZ website.

The latter two combined can require
250watts to 350 watts even before adding in the transmitter requirements.

Tsk, tsk, tsk! Why not figure in the entire HOUSE that holds
the radio? :-)

Back in 1947 or so, ENIAC was crunching numbers using around 50
thousand tubes (give or take) and gulping KWe like a small
housing project. In 2000, my little HP 32S II pocket programmable
calculator was loaded with three small Lithium-ion battery cells
and allowed me to crunch numbers FASTER than ENIAC, with MORE
PRECISION than ENIAC, with FAR MORE RELIABILITY than ENIAC, and
had MORE BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS for calculation than was even dreamed
of for ENIAC. Ya know what? It still has those SAME BATTERIES!
Even after seeing a lot of use, it still has the juice.

Go take apart an AMTOR peripheral coupler, analyze its innards,
and report back on power consumption. A modern one, not one of
the first using discrete transistors. Ain't no 100 Watt power
consumption or even close to it. My ancient HP 722 inkjet printer
takes only a few Watts on standby, hardly more than that to print
text at a reasonable rate; it has an in-line-cord 'wall wart' style
power supply unit that doesn't get warm in-use.

I grant you that an electronic display takes some Watts. I don't
immediately recall the power demand on my Samsung 712n flat-panel
display but just from feeling the top vents, it can't be more than
50 Watts. It's a year old and as bright as ever, fine
distortionless detail, a "17-inch" size flat-panel. That display
COULD simultaneously show all the details of an operating HF
transceiver as well as the text into and out of an AMTOR box
(or any of the 'TORs). Of course that needs the computer box
itself which DOES take some Watts...but the box power demand has
dropped considerably since 1981 in addition to increasing its
functioning waayyyyyy above the original 4 MHz clock first Boca
Raton boxes. The HP box I've got now is lazily doing all this
word processing, running SETI@home data unit in the background,
running diagnostics on itself, all seemingly simultaneous. It
can do much more, and does with AVIs or MPEGs and other things.

Might I suggest an even ittier-bittier power demand "CW" unit,
doesn't even need a hardware receiver, just the optical wetware
and perhaps a telescope (zero power demand). Connect a manual
code key in place of a white-LED flashlight switch and "blip"
away as fast as you can in morse code. No problem, the LED
light can follow all amateur Data on-off switching. Excellent
efficiency in Lumens/Watt, better than a transistorized Class
C amplifier. Of course, the frequency is ABOVE the maximum
ITU frequency allocation of 300 GHz and therefore doesn't need
any license of any kind! Of course, daylight operation isn't
too swift for "DX." :-)

bit bit