Andy wrote: > Yes, I received a private email from the individual that is preparing > the IED's. With reference to ALE soundings, he cites .. > > ") 1 illegal 1-way transmissions; > >> 2) illegal automatic beaconing below 28.200 MHz, and; 3) illegal automatic >> control of a digital station." >> What's sad is that the heavy majority of soundings at my station are absolutely attended and monitored.
And if I hear the frequency in use, I interrupt it. ALE listens on a channel about the same as an SSB op would, and I can pre-empt the transmission with a click. I can do this remotely, but the majority of the time, I'm at my desk, as my station is setup in my office, which is also where I spend my hobby time in the evenings. I also monitor/control via tightvnc from my upstairs computers as well as from my phone. Their point 3 is completely invalid. 1 & 2 are subject to interpretation. Everyone has an opinion. Only one really counts, and we have not heard from them. About the only time I need to pre-empt a sound is on 7102 aft/evening and it's 100% winlink/P3 traffic. Very occasionally on 20&30m, again winlink, and again pretty much only in the evenings. I've never run across psk. Occasionally hear the musical tones of other modes, but have virtually never had to pre-empt a sound for them. I have had the musical tones fire up right in the middle of an ALE QSO. Kbd to kbd. P3 more likely to fire up, but our other non-Pactor modes can also have hidden terminal effect. It's physics. There was even a post here in the last week or so about testing nbems and having musical tones fire up on top of them. But I did not see a witch hunt there. Seems it's OK for some protocols. RTTY I've run into during contests, and the issue is they park on a frequency can endless call CQ for hours, with transmissions far longer than ALE soundings. Every 20-30 seconds. I like rtty, and use it. RTTY has it's right to exist as well. But I sure get annoyed at times at what seems to me to be intentional interference. I suspect it's not, but frequency selection, power levels, and the one way nature of the qso's make me wonder. From testing, with narrow filters RTTY can setup on a freq and never hear an AFSK signal. Should they have to listen on SSB? P3 ops do listen on SSB, as that's the mode their radio is in (assuming they listen, which I believe most do). But do RTTY ops listen in SSB before transmitting? I'm pretty sure they do not. When a contest op has setup shop on a heavily contended frequency, you can listen all you want, and hope for a break. It will never happen. So in that case, I do believe some hams just give up. Some go home, so go ahead and make their call. I just turn off the radio for a while, it's not worth getting frustrated over. But some seem to take enjoyment in getting frustrated. I've listed in earlier email about five examples where hidden terminal effect, or worse, transmissions w/o listening take place daily on HF. These are being tolerated. All are rude. Some are clearly more malicious than the hapless digital operator, as they are intentional. Some are just sloppy ops, bad habits, but occur far more frequently than we encounter in the digital world. Split DX operation would have to cease if the rules were enforced as the recent nay-sayers would want. Unless you could prove you had dual receive and monitored your TX frequency prior to xmit. My 950SDX does that, so I could continue to operate DX split. So back to ALE soundings. The neat thing about ale is that the stations capture LQA data from any ALE transmission, including a CQ. If soundings come to an end, you'll just see more calls, as stations blindly call each other with no LQA data rather than the focused, "know they are there" LQA based calls. Completely monitored, staffed, transmissions. But CQ's and directed calls are longer, and on more bands, more frequently. So this is definitely a case of "be careful of what you ask for". Myself, I think the more we poke & prod the FCC with "this can't be legal, it's not my mode" interpretation issues the more likely we are to see bandwidth based sub-bands implemented. So in some aspects, we'll all get something, even if it's not what we want. I'd expect something like: 10% CW only, 15% CW and narrow data (500 hz), 25% 3kc data, 45% 3kc voice, with 5% wide voice tolerated (AM included). >From a number of simultaneous QSO's which can be sustained, it's an equitable distribution, but I know everyone will complain. That's the problem with forcing your parents to cut the cake, you will get what you get. And it's likely to be not exactly what you want. Have fun, Alan km4ba
