[digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
There are anti-automatic and negative-hams who would like to hold digital ham radio back in the same tired olde structure of brass pounding nets and CQ random contacts and bulletin boards of the 20th century. But the facts of the matter are, that the old nets based upon manual monitoring and manual message-passing and even logging in to check messages are not up to the standards of modern communications. The only way for ham radio to stay relevant in today's world and in the future, is to keep moving forward with new methods of interfacing ham networks with the world's digital communication systems. For those hams who are still living in the past, possibly they would rather not open their eyes to see the reality of what our service has become these days... The number of active hams on HF is dwindling. Except for weekend (contests) or evening (80m ragchews in the major population areas), in many areas of the world you can tune through several megahertz of HF ham spectrum without copying many strong signals. The fact that HF ham bands are not crowded, is not completely due to the low solar cycle. It is partly the result of the HF active ham radio population dying off. We have not attracted new younger hams to HF because the older hams have literally pushed away the young hams with bad attitude and lack of vision and enthusiasm for the future of technological progress. As one example, for the critical years in the last decade of the 20th century, we showed our contempt for a new generation of hams by putting up the obstacle of morse code testing. But this isn't about the dead issue of morse code testing... what young person wants to be a part of a dying technology? We, as hams and radio experimenters and communicators and emergency volunteers should be wholeheartedly embracing all the new and wonderful ways that we can make more interesting connections with people and communication technology. There is more variety in digital communication systems these days than there ever has been in history. How can we continue to bring HF ham radio into the future of communication? I can tell you for sure that it won't be with the olde ham formula of calling CQ, random calling, or round-table nets. From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? If you are an HF Emcomm operator, can you make an emergency call, day or night, without prior notice or schedule, and get the message through? If the answer is yes, then what if 50 hams were trying to send an HF emcomm message at same time? Could you still get the message through? These are just foundation examples, the basic minimum that we need to be able to do as hams, in order to be relevant in today's world of communications. There is so much more that can be done. It's an exciting world, we can be a vibrant part of it, or we can long for the good ole days before cell phones when an HT on your belt was impressive. It's our choice. There are so many possibilities for new inventions and techniques to be developed in ham radio digital networking. It's our future. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA That's the news. If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. --Scoop Nisker, Radio Newscaster
[digitalradio] Re: Which radio ?
The FT-450 is the superior HF rig of the two absolutely. No other current rig can better or equal it without nearly doubling the price! The IF DSP requires no extra filters works /remarkably/ well. It costs less, too. Can you live without 2m 70cm? Then the choice is made! Stu AF6IT --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Ted Wager t...@... wrote: I am returning to amateur radio after 15 years qrt and looking for a new radio Main interests are listening hf and digi modes, principally psk..My choice is down to either the yaesu ft450 or the Yaesu ft-857d.Any comments on my choice welcome and should I look at any other radios ? -- Regards Ted Wager High Peak UK Using linxmint Helena
[digitalradio] Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems
Despite your vigorous attempt below to paint this issue as old vs new, it's simply a conflict between good engineering and bad engineering. Include a competent busy frequency detector in your automatic station design, and opposition to such stations will disappear. If you really believe that your approach merits the assignment of amateur frequencies for your exclusive use, then go convince the FCC and IARU to allocate them. In the mean time, kindly refrain from QRMing ongoing QSOs when you operate on frequencies that we all share. 73, Dave, AA6YQ --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, expeditionradio expeditionra...@... wrote: There are anti-automatic and negative-hams who would like to hold digital ham radio back in the same tired olde structure of brass pounding nets and CQ random contacts and bulletin boards of the 20th century. But the facts of the matter are, that the old nets based upon manual monitoring and manual message-passing and even logging in to check messages are not up to the standards of modern communications. The only way for ham radio to stay relevant in today's world and in the future, is to keep moving forward with new methods of interfacing ham networks with the world's digital communication systems. For those hams who are still living in the past, possibly they would rather not open their eyes to see the reality of what our service has become these days... The number of active hams on HF is dwindling. Except for weekend (contests) or evening (80m ragchews in the major population areas), in many areas of the world you can tune through several megahertz of HF ham spectrum without copying many strong signals. The fact that HF ham bands are not crowded, is not completely due to the low solar cycle. It is partly the result of the HF active ham radio population dying off. We have not attracted new younger hams to HF because the older hams have literally pushed away the young hams with bad attitude and lack of vision and enthusiasm for the future of technological progress. As one example, for the critical years in the last decade of the 20th century, we showed our contempt for a new generation of hams by putting up the obstacle of morse code testing. But this isn't about the dead issue of morse code testing... what young person wants to be a part of a dying technology? We, as hams and radio experimenters and communicators and emergency volunteers should be wholeheartedly embracing all the new and wonderful ways that we can make more interesting connections with people and communication technology. There is more variety in digital communication systems these days than there ever has been in history. How can we continue to bring HF ham radio into the future of communication? I can tell you for sure that it won't be with the olde ham formula of calling CQ, random calling, or round-table nets. From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? If you are an HF Emcomm operator, can you make an emergency call, day or night, without prior notice or schedule, and get the message through? If the answer is yes, then what if 50 hams were trying to send an HF emcomm message at same time? Could you still get the message through? These are just foundation examples, the basic minimum that we need to be able to do as hams, in order to be relevant in today's world of communications. There is so much more that can be done. It's an exciting world, we can be a vibrant part of it, or we can long for the good ole days before cell phones when an HT on your belt was impressive. It's our choice. There are so many possibilities for new inventions and techniques to be developed in ham radio digital networking. It's our future. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA That's the news. If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. --Scoop Nisker, Radio Newscaster
AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
.snip From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do .. with echolink but there is something missing in the system It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net . Nowadays if I move through the country I have to start the contact to my hamfriends at home cause they do not know where I am in this moment . If I wanna connect o another friend who is somewhere in the country we have to make a sked on a third node (1 node where he is, 1 node where I am and another node that we know the number of to make a sked) In the other way when telling the system that you are in the area of node xyz it would be a lot easier Somebody knows my nodenumber at home or calls me via call sign the system knows that I am not at home but available at node xyz . Now there are different ways The node where my hamfriend connects to echolink tells him: dg9bfc is available at node number 12345 Do you wanna connect? Push button 1 .. node says : you will be connected to node 12345 Do you wann leave a message? Push button number 2 . And leave the message in the system Now echolink makes a store and forward to the node where I am and plays the message that would be an echolink system what I would like more as the today system no question echolink is good but it could be used from more hams if it was a bit better in some cases hams who don´t even have a computer have a unique number cause you can also call in echolink with the callsign hams who have connected to echolink with a pc have more than just one number the number code from their callsign and the nodenumber from the pc when they are at home so when somebody calls my homenumber and the pc is off . there could be an announce that tells the other guys that I am not at home but reachable via xyz or an announce to leave a message (at my home pc if available or in the system with s+f) etc. etc. etc. s .. echolink is quite good but could be made a bit better .. just my 0.02$ dg9bfc sigi ps if somebody in this group knows the programmer of echolink please feel free to store and forward this mail to him . Maybe he likes the idea
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
I knew one of the hams who first envisioned what would later end up being SCAMP, followed its development with interest, and was thoroughly disgusted at the way the WinLink group used those efforts as a cheap propaganda ploy instead of pursuing it honestly. SCAMP was at no point intended by the WinLink group to see actual use, its development was stretched out and used as a talking point for political purposes. As soon as its utility for that purpose became unsupportable, it was uncerimoniously killed. At no point did the WinLink group intend to phase out the use of the SCS harmful interference mills. This still holds true today. WinMore is just one more SCAMP, unfortunately. Knowing the level of character and intelligence to be found in the WinLink group, I have not followed WinMore's development. - I already know it's fate. After stretching out its supposed development for as long as possible, milking it for political traction ( We are working on ending our widespread inteference - honest! ) there will come the inevitable point where it is reluctantly admitted that WinMore just cannot do the job nearly as well as PACTOR III and then all of a sudden, you won't hear anything more about WinMore. The thing that the ARRL, the FCC, and all amateurs should understand is that WinLink will never be reformed. They hope to become so thoroughly established with delaying tactics like SCAMP and WinMore that eventually the FCC will throw up their hands and award them private spectrum of their own, or re-write PART97 so that we no longer enjoy the use of shared spectrum, thus bringing amateur radio to an end. They want a channelized, CB-like environment and the ARRL, to its discredit, is behind them 100%. As was the case with city and county entities forcing thier employees to get ham tickets as they pursued DHS grant money, and eventually starting to eye amateur radio spectrum as something to lobby for the possession of, our only real hope for a good outcome in this case is for the FCC to step in. We cannot hope for help or support from the ARRL, which again is part of the problem. So no, I have not followed WinMore's development at all, since I already know its fate. Note how WinMore is not open source but is strictly proprietary to the WinLink group, just like SCAMP was. They will be using this control to be sure that it is not developed further or used for any other purpose by anyone else. When they decide to kill it, they will want it to stay dead. - Just as dead as SCAMP is today. 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org - Original Message - From: Dave AA6YQ To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 10:50 PM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Did you evaluate the busy frequency detector in Scamp, Charles? Have you evaluated the busy frequency detector in Winmor? 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Charles Brabham Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 9:55 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Packet radio gets by with a simple carrier detect, PACTOR can only detect other PACTOR stations, and from what I can tell, ALE has no busy detection at all. Several years ago I took a serious look at automated busy detection, and always ran across the same stone wall: A more sophisticated busy detect that can usually tell the difference between noise and a human activity like speech or digital transmissions is possible - BUT - only after the software has a fairly long audio sample to work with, and can look back upon that sample. It can't do this instantly, or even very quickly unless you have a supercomputer to work with. If it listens to a long sample and a new signal comes in toward the end of that sample, that new signal may or may not end up being identified. This is a terrible thing to have to report, but Packet's carrier detect is the most effective and sophisticated automatic signal detection scheme we currently have at our disposal. - It detects more kinds of activity *right then* than anything else that hams are currently using. There are lots of signals that carrier detect will not detect - but it is still the best thing out there, that can automatically detect and act in ( more or less ) real-time. The human ear works better, detecting signal intelligence and differentiating it from noise far better than any automated detection system. Period. Better still is the human eye, looking at a properly set up waterfall display that will show you recognizable patterns in the waterfall image that you may not be able to register just by listening. One thing to ponder is why carrier detect, developed
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect -Winmor
WINMOR's busy detect works perfectly at the initiating station's end, a pop-up windows tells you the frequency is in use and ask if you really want to go ahead and transmit. I have not seen it work at the other end, i.e. prevent another station connecting because a third party is also detected at the receive station's end. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect -Winmor
Yes, seen that myself. philw de ka1gmn On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Andy obrien k3uka...@gmail.com wrote: WINMOR's busy detect works perfectly at the initiating station's end, a pop-up windows tells you the frequency is in use and ask if you really want to go ahead and transmit. I have not seen it work at the other end, i.e. prevent another station connecting because a third party is also detected at the receive station's end. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
I hope you are wrong this time. All your previous comments have been right but maybe this time you could be wrong. Rick Muething is putting so much work into Winmor AND it is working so well, that this time it may become widely used. The busy detect feature works very well, even detecting voice signals at times. The speeds achieved seem to be faster than Pactor 2. They are not faster than Pactor 3 but the bandwidth is smaller too (1600 hz compared to 2400 hz). There is no guarantee that the guys with Pactor 3 modems will stop QRMing but once there is a good alternative maybe we can get the FCC to issue citations to those who interfere. The testing with the peer to peer program (RMS Express) has gone well and they are now working on the server version. It won't be long until that is broadly tested. Hang in there and let's see how it works. Howard K5HB From: Charles Brabham n5...@uspacket.org To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tue, November 24, 2009 6:36:19 AM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect I knew one of the hams who first envisioned what would later end up being SCAMP, followed its development with interest, and was thoroughly disgusted at the way the WinLink group used those efforts as a cheap propaganda ploy instead of pursuing it honestly. SCAMP was at no point intended by the WinLink group to see actual use, its development was stretched out and used as a talking point for political purposes. As soon as its utility for that purpose became unsupportable, it was uncerimoniously killed. At no point did the WinLink group intend to phase out the use of the SCS harmful interference mills. This still holds true today. WinMore is just one more SCAMP, unfortunately. Knowing the level of character and intelligence to be found in the WinLink group, I have not followed WinMore's development. - I already know it's fate. After stretching out its supposed development for as long as possible, milking it for political traction ( We are working on ending our widespread inteference - honest! ) there will come the inevitable point where it is reluctantly admitted that WinMore just cannot do the job nearly as well as PACTOR III and then all of a sudden, you won't hear anything more about WinMore. The thing that the ARRL, the FCC, and all amateurs should understand is that WinLink will never be reformed. They hope to become so thoroughly established with delaying tactics like SCAMP and WinMore that eventually the FCC will throw up their hands and award them private spectrum of their own, or re-write PART97 so that we no longer enjoy the use of shared spectrum, thus bringing amateur radio to an end. They want a channelized, CB-like environment and the ARRL, to its discredit, is behind them 100%. As was the case with city and county entities forcing thier employees to get ham tickets as they pursued DHS grant money, and eventually starting to eye amateur radio spectrum as something to lobby for the possession of, our only real hope for a good outcome in this case is for the FCC to step in. We cannot hope for help or support from the ARRL, which again is part of the problem. So no, I have not followed WinMore's development at all, since I already know its fate. Note how WinMore is not open source but is strictly proprietary to the WinLink group, just like SCAMP was. They will be using this control to be sure that it is not developed further or used for any other purpose by anyone else. When they decide to kill it, they will want it to stay dead. - Just as dead as SCAMP is today. 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet. Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org - Original Message - From: Dave AA6YQ To: digitalradio@ yahoogroups. com Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 10:50 PM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Did you evaluate the busy frequency detector in Scamp, Charles? Have you evaluated the busy frequency detector in Winmor? 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@ yahoogroups. com [mailto:digitalradi o...@yahoogroups. com]On Behalf Of Charles Brabham Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 9:55 PM To: digitalradio@ yahoogroups. com Subject: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Packet radio gets by with a simple carrier detect, PACTOR can only detect other PACTOR stations, and from what I can tell, ALE has no busy detection at all. Several years ago I took a serious look at automated busy detection, and always ran across the same stone wall: A more sophisticated busy detect that can usually tell the difference between noise and a human activity like speech or digital transmissions is possible - BUT - only after the software has a fairly long audio sample to work with, and can look back upon that sample. It
Re: AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
On Tuesday 24 November 2009 05:26:20 Siegfried Jackstien wrote: .snip From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do .. with echolink but there is something missing in the system It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net . Nowadays if I move through the country I have to start the contact to my hamfriends at home cause they do not know where I am in this moment . If I wanna connect o another friend who is somewhere in the country we have to make a sked on a third node (1 node where he is, 1 node where I am and another node that we know the number of to make a sked) In the other way when telling the system that you are in the area of node xyz it would be a lot easier Somebody knows my nodenumber at home or calls me via call sign the system knows that I am not at home but available at node xyz . Now there are different ways The node where my hamfriend connects to echolink tells him: dg9bfc is available at node number 12345 Do you wanna connect? Push button 1 .. node says : you will be connected to node 12345 Do you wann leave a message? Push button number 2 . And leave the message in the system Now echolink makes a store and forward to the node where I am and plays the message that would be an echolink system what I would like more as the today system no question echolink is good but it could be used from more hams if it was a bit better in some cases hams who don´t even have a computer have a unique number cause you can also call in echolink with the callsign hams who have connected to echolink with a pc have more than just one number the number code from their callsign and the nodenumber from the pc when they are at home so when somebody calls my homenumber and the pc is off . there could be an announce that tells the other guys that I am not at home but reachable via xyz or an announce to leave a message (at my home pc if available or in the system with s+f) etc. etc. etc. s .. echolink is quite good but could be made a bit better .. just my 0.02$ dg9bfc sigi Another twist to this is to use one of the newer D-star Icom radios along with an interface to Echolink and APRS so that your friends can contact you no matter what system you are in range of. The down side to this would be that you could only use this on 6m and above and if you went and invested in a NEW D-star handheld or mobile which I can't afford to do right now. Plus I am a little skeptical of a digital mode that does so much but with no error correction. It just reminds me of how we here in the US had Digital Television and all its promises shoved down our throats...:( I have seen coverage areas shrink in half for some areas after the switch. I consider D-star a viable mode but not mature enough yet for use in the US other than a experiment to find out the shortcomings and correct them as they find them. In small concentrated areas like Japan and most European cities, I see D-star working great, possibly doing good here in most major US cities also. James W8ISS
[digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems
Hi Sigi, Yes, Echolink is a wonderful example of a modern networked radio communication system. Can you please tell me which HF frequencies and modes in europe you use to ring up your friend with echolink? How can you ring up your friend day and night with it on HF? Does anyone have a multi-band HF node on Echolink? I ran an HF-SSB voice echolink node for over a year, on 5371.5kHz and 18157.5kHz. It was fun and useful. Over 1000 hams used it during that year. Some of the more interesting QSOs on it were the ones with the most distant and unusual situations... such as: A european ham on holiday, walking along a beach in Canary Islands on a 2m FM HT, talking with an american ham hiking with a PRC-1099 manpack on 20W SSB 18MHz in Colorado USA. But of course, all the connections were manual operation with voice calling. Echolink lacked the key signaling and alerting feature to ring up someone if they were not listening to the speaker. It also lacked remote PTT, so it had to be manually monitored, the old way. Perhaps the recent software updates have added new alert methods or remote PTT? The use of DTMF tones for signaling from end-to-end is not available in most systems due to many repeaters auto-muting DTMF. This makes it difficult to add any type of universal on-channel audio signalling. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA dg9bfc sigi wrote: .snip Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA wrote: From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do .. with echolink but there is something missing in the system It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net . .
Re: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
And, you just lost the Mystery of radio communications. The unknown factors are not there, when you punch in a telephone number. It would be a heck of a lot cheapter to just phone home. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB All 2 years or more (except Novice). Short stints at: DA/PA/SU/HZ/7X/DU CR9/7Y/KH7/5A/GW/GM/F Pls QSL direct, buro, or LOTW preferred, I Do not use, but as a courtesy do upload to eQSL for those who do. Moderator DXandTALK http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk Digital_modes http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digital_modes/?yguid=341090159 - Original Message - From: Siegfried Jackstien To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:26 AM Subject: AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems ..snip From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do ... with echolink . but there is something missing in the system . It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net .. Nowadays if I move through the country I have to start the contact to my hamfriends at home cause they do not know where I am in this moment .. If I wanna connect o another friend who is somewhere in the country we have to make a sked on a third node (1 node where he is, 1 node where I am and another node that we know the number of to make a sked) In the other way when telling the system that you are in the area of node xyz it would be a lot easier . Somebody knows my nodenumber at home or calls me via call sign . the system knows that I am not at home but available at node xyz .. Now there are different ways The node where my hamfriend connects to echolink tells him: dg9bfc is available at node number 12345 Do you wanna connect? Push button 1 ... node says : you will be connected to node 12345 Do you wann leave a message? Push button number 2 .. And leave the message in the system Now echolink makes a store and forward to the node where I am and plays the message that would be an echolink system what I would like more as the today system no question echolink is good but it could be used from more hams if it was a bit better in some cases hams who don´t even have a computer have a unique number cause you can also call in echolink with the callsign hams who have connected to echolink with a pc have more than just one number the number code from their callsign and the nodenumber from the pc when they are at home so when somebody calls my homenumber and the pc is off .. there could be an announce that tells the other guys that I am not at home but reachable via xyz or an announce to leave a message (at my home pc if available or in the system with s+f) . etc. etc. etc. s ... echolink is quite good . but could be made a bit better ... just my 0.02$ dg9bfc sigi ps if somebody in this group knows the programmer of echolink please feel free to store and forward this mail to him .. Maybe he likes the idea
Re: AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
try CQ100... its a blast for us old guys having ant restrictions .73's Ken --- On Tue, 11/24/09, James French w8...@wideopenwest.com wrote: From: James French w8...@wideopenwest.com Subject: Re: AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 10:33 AM On Tuesday 24 November 2009 05:26:20 Siegfried Jackstien wrote: ….snip From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do ….. with echolink … but there is something missing in the system … It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net …. Nowadays if I move through the country I have to start the contact to my hamfriends at home cause they do not know where I am in this moment …. If I wanna connect o another friend who is somewhere in the country we have to make a sked on a third node (1 node where he is, 1 node where I am and another node that we know the number of to make a sked) In the other way when telling the system that you are in the area of node xyz it would be a lot easier … Somebody knows my nodenumber at home or calls me via call sign … the system knows that I am not at home but available at node xyz …. Now there are different ways The node where my hamfriend connects to echolink tells him: dg9bfc is available at node number 12345 Do you wanna connect? Push button 1 ….. node says : you will be connected to node 12345 Do you wann leave a message? Push button number 2 …. And leave the message in the system Now echolink makes a store and forward to the node where I am and plays the message that would be an echolink system what I would like more as the today system no question echolink is good but it could be used from more hams if it was a bit better in some cases hams who don´t even have a computer have a unique number cause you can also call in echolink with the callsign hams who have connected to echolink with a pc have more than just one number the number code from their callsign and the nodenumber from the pc when they are at home so when somebody calls my homenumber and the pc is off …. there could be an announce that tells the other guys that I am not at home but reachable via xyz or an announce to leave a message (at my home pc if available or in the system with s+f) … etc. etc. etc. s ….. echolink is quite good … but could be made a bit better ….. just my 0.02$ dg9bfc sigi Another twist to this is to use one of the newer D-star Icom radios along with an interface to Echolink and APRS so that your friends can contact you no matter what system you are in range of. The down side to this would be that you could only use this on 6m and above and if you went and invested in a NEW D-star handheld or mobile which I can't afford to do right now. Plus I am a little skeptical of a digital mode that does so much but with no error correction. It just reminds me of how we here in the US had Digital Television and all its promises shoved down our throats...:( I have seen coverage areas shrink in half for some areas after the switch. I consider D-star a viable mode but not mature enough yet for use in the US other than a experiment to find out the shortcomings and correct them as they find them. In small concentrated areas like Japan and most European cities, I see D-star working great, possibly doing good here in most major US cities also. James W8ISS
Re: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? You will find this function in pskmail... Just link passively to any pskmail server on HF, and send an IM via APRS to any other station linked to any other pskmail server, whichever frquency. This also works cross band between HF and VHF/UHF... as well as between HF and an Internet web page. No need to have an active session for this, This works with any mode from THOR8 to PSK500.. No need for sounding, routing is automatic, 73, Rein PA0R -- http://pa0r.blogspirit.com Suggested frequencies for calling CQ with experimental digital modes = 3584,10147, 14074 USB on your dial plus 1000Hz on waterfall. Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Pages at http://www.obriensweb.com/sked Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: digitalradio-dig...@yahoogroups.com digitalradio-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: digitalradio-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems
Echolink is just another computer messenger. Echolink is not ham radio, it has no place in ham radio, and fails the test even as a tool of ham radio. Echolink is for those who can't figure out how to make a real radio work! --- On Tue, 11/24/09, expeditionradio expeditionra...@yahoo.com wrote: From: expeditionradio expeditionra...@yahoo.com Subject: [digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 7:02 AM Hi Sigi, Yes, Echolink is a wonderful example of a modern networked radio communication system. Can you please tell me which HF frequencies and modes in europe you use to ring up your friend with echolink? How can you ring up your friend day and night with it on HF? Does anyone have a multi-band HF node on Echolink? I ran an HF-SSB voice echolink node for over a year, on 5371.5kHz and 18157.5kHz. It was fun and useful. Over 1000 hams used it during that year. Some of the more interesting QSOs on it were the ones with the most distant and unusual situations.. . such as: A european ham on holiday, walking along a beach in Canary Islands on a 2m FM HT, talking with an american ham hiking with a PRC-1099 manpack on 20W SSB 18MHz in Colorado USA. But of course, all the connections were manual operation with voice calling. Echolink lacked the key signaling and alerting feature to ring up someone if they were not listening to the speaker. It also lacked remote PTT, so it had to be manually monitored, the old way. Perhaps the recent software updates have added new alert methods or remote PTT? The use of DTMF tones for signaling from end-to-end is not available in most systems due to many repeaters auto-muting DTMF. This makes it difficult to add any type of universal on-channel audio signalling. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA dg9bfc sigi wrote: ….snip Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA wrote: From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do ….. with echolink … but there is something missing in the system … It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net …. .
AW: [digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems
Snip... Can you please tell me which HF frequencies and modes in europe you use to ring up your friend with echolink? Snip.. Vhf and uhf . in germany there are so many nodes that even with a rubberduck and a ht you can access the system most of the time .. Snip.. I ran an HF-SSB voice echolink node for over a year, on 5371.5kHz and 18157.5kHz. It was fun and useful. Over 1000 hams used it during that year. Some of the more interesting QSOs on it were the ones with the most distant and unusual situations... such as: A european ham on holiday, walking along a beach in Canary Islands on a 2m FM HT, talking with an american ham hiking with a PRC-1099 manpack on 20W SSB 18MHz in Colorado USA. snip... Surely a lot of fun .. I sometimes did this on 80 and on topband for fun and replaying audio to others . Snip... The use of DTMF tones for signaling from end-to-end is not available in most systems due to many repeaters auto-muting DTMF. This makes it difficult to add any type of universal on-channel audio signalling. snip.. I do not wanna use dtmf for on channel signalling ... Just e number code that the echolink node knows YOUR nodenumber .. The number is normaly in the system when you connect via your home pc ... Now if you move trough the country your node pc is off or switched to -r or -l mode . (maybe for bringing another node on the air for other hams) so your normal number is not in the system.. With a special number (say your own number is 22334) for instance **99*22334 you tell the system that your number is 22334 and you are now in the area of the node where you played your number in and if any calls you the call should be forwarded (or a stored message of maybe 30sec. is store and forward to the node where you are and played to you) Everything is possible with only the dtmf tones on the rf side (not via internet audio) The other way is right . the dtmf tones MUST be muted via internet audio . or the system will not know if the tone is for the node where you connected or for the node that you are connected with... I am sure that this function is possible ... maybe with another number behind it for giving your MYNODEnumber a lifetime .. (**99*22334*(1-24)* for lifetime of 1 hour to one day max... So if you are on holiday somewhere ore are working somewhere in the country you have to tell the next available node your number and you are available with your homenodenumber ... So you do not have to connect your friends manually and tell them where you are now and what nodenumber you are connected with... that function would make echolink work as a cellphone (almost) No automatic roaming .. But a manual roaming .. If this would be implemented in the soft it would be only a small step to mute your receiver and have a dtmf receiver built in that rings when your number is transmitted from the node Next connect your car alarm horn to a relais .. just kidding ... But the other things I wrote are an idea how the system could be upgraded .. Just my 2 cents Dg9bfc Sigi Ps we should not make another and another and another system like echolink, wires, amfones, and the new d-star etc We should try to bring up a system on the air that is cheap, easy to work with, and can be used with a simple dtmf mic as the minimum requirement ... and upgrading echolink would be such a system .
AW: [digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems
No no no echolink is a system to connect different hams together via internet but not as a messenger It is for audio and you can connect your radio to your pc and walk through your city and others can talk to you even if they are on the other side of the world .. okay only the last mile is ham radio (if you are not on your keyboard) but it is a hamradio tool .. that´s WHAT I THINK about echolink . You thoughts may be different .. Sigi Dg9bfc _ Von: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] Im Auftrag von Dan Hensley Gesendet: Dienstag, 24. November 2009 20:26 An: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Betreff: Re: [digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems Echolink is just another computer messenger. Echolink is not ham radio, it has no place in ham radio, and fails the test even as a tool of ham radio. Echolink is for those who can't figure out how to make a real radio work! --- On Tue, 11/24/09, expeditionradio expeditionradio@ mailto:expeditionradio%40yahoo.com yahoo.com wrote: From: expeditionradio expeditionradio@ mailto:expeditionradio%40yahoo.com yahoo.com Subject: [digitalradio] Echolink Re: Ham HF networking digital communication systems To: digitalradio@ mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 7:02 AM Hi Sigi, Yes, Echolink is a wonderful example of a modern networked radio communication system. Can you please tell me which HF frequencies and modes in europe you use to ring up your friend with echolink? How can you ring up your friend day and night with it on HF? Does anyone have a multi-band HF node on Echolink? I ran an HF-SSB voice echolink node for over a year, on 5371.5kHz and 18157.5kHz. It was fun and useful. Over 1000 hams used it during that year. Some of the more interesting QSOs on it were the ones with the most distant and unusual situations.. . such as: A european ham on holiday, walking along a beach in Canary Islands on a 2m FM HT, talking with an american ham hiking with a PRC-1099 manpack on 20W SSB 18MHz in Colorado USA. But of course, all the connections were manual operation with voice calling. Echolink lacked the key signaling and alerting feature to ring up someone if they were not listening to the speaker. It also lacked remote PTT, so it had to be manually monitored, the old way. Perhaps the recent software updates have added new alert methods or remote PTT? The use of DTMF tones for signaling from end-to-end is not available in most systems due to many repeaters auto-muting DTMF. This makes it difficult to add any type of universal on-channel audio signalling. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA dg9bfc sigi wrote: .snip Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA wrote: From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do .. with echolink but there is something missing in the system It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net . .
AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems
Hi danny . Yes sitting in front of your shortwave and finding a rare dx station is a different story A lot cheaper to phone home??? I have a friend who works sometimes in Australia sometimes Russia and sometimes usa or Europe . If you see his phone bill you would get a heart attack And the important thing is . Echolink is already there so you will not have to reinvent the wheel Greetz Sigi Ps I often spoke to him while he was in Sydney in his hotel . I retransmitted him on our local club qrg and it was a lot of fun . _ Von: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] Im Auftrag von DANNY DOUGLAS Gesendet: Dienstag, 24. November 2009 19:52 An: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Betreff: Re: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems And, you just lost the Mystery of radio communications. The unknown factors are not there, when you punch in a telephone number. It would be a heck of a lot cheapter to just phone home. Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB All 2 years or more (except Novice). Short stints at: DA/PA/SU/HZ/7X/DU CR9/7Y/KH7/5A/GW/GM/F Pls QSL direct, buro, or LOTW preferred, I Do not use, but as a courtesy do upload to eQSL for those who do. Moderator DXandTALK http://groups. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk Digital_modes http://groups. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digital_modes/?yguid=341090159 yahoo.com/group/digital_modes/?yguid=341090159 - Original Message - From: Siegfried Jackstien mailto:siegfried.jackst...@freenet.de To: digitalradio@ mailto:digitalradio@yahoogroups.com yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:26 AM Subject: AW: [digitalradio] Ham HF networking digital communication systems .snip From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? -snip Yes I can do .. with echolink but there is something missing in the system It should be possible to connect to an echolink node and tell the node that you are available via this node (with dtmf tones) Something like the mybbs in the packet net . Nowadays if I move through the country I have to start the contact to my hamfriends at home cause they do not know where I am in this moment . If I wanna connect o another friend who is somewhere in the country we have to make a sked on a third node (1 node where he is, 1 node where I am and another node that we know the number of to make a sked) In the other way when telling the system that you are in the area of node xyz it would be a lot easier Somebody knows my nodenumber at home or calls me via call sign the system knows that I am not at home but available at node xyz . Now there are different ways The node where my hamfriend connects to echolink tells him: dg9bfc is available at node number 12345 Do you wanna connect? Push button 1 .. node says : you will be connected to node 12345 Do you wann leave a message? Push button number 2 . And leave the message in the system Now echolink makes a store and forward to the node where I am and plays the message that would be an echolink system what I would like more as the today system no question echolink is good but it could be used from more hams if it was a bit better in some cases hams who don´t even have a computer have a unique number cause you can also call in echolink with the callsign hams who have connected to echolink with a pc have more than just one number the number code from their callsign and the nodenumber from the pc when they are at home so when somebody calls my homenumber and the pc is off . there could be an announce that tells the other guys that I am not at home but reachable via xyz or an announce to leave a message (at my home pc if available or in the system with s+f) etc. etc. etc. s .. echolink is quite good but could be made a bit better .. just my 0.02$ dg9bfc sigi ps if somebody in this group knows the programmer of echolink please feel free to store and forward this mail to him . Maybe he likes the idea
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
Hi Dave I'm no fan of the way in which many contest stations seem to use, and abuse, the band plans (..) I could not agree with you more. 73 de LA5VNA Steinar Dave Ackrill wrote: DANNY DOUGLAS wrote: Bonnie, sitting on the side, I see both sides of this. You, on one hand, always appear to be pushing expansion of new modes - Original Message - From: expeditionradio If you are really concerned about lids on HF, start with the #1 primary source of QRM: contesters. I'm no fan of the way in which many contest stations seem to use, and abuse, the band plans, but neither am I a fan of digital modes that, maybe unintentionally at times, trample upon other legitimate users of the bands either... Unfortunately, legislating against either abuse is both unlikely to work and probably impossible to implement. Personally, I would like the organisers of the various contests to enforce their own rules against persistent offenders. However, experience over many years suggests that they either will not, or dare not, do this, which begs the question why have the rules? I would prefer that the DX community did not trample on top of people at times, and listen before they transmitted and I would like the Band Police to not transmit over the top of what they think should, or should not, be done on a frequency. I would also like the ALE and digital community to recognise that they share the bands with everyone else and are not immune from the 'listen before use' rule either. However, these are just my 'would like to have' and are obviously not shared by the majority, as they do not happen. Dave (G0DJA)
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
I am fully aware of WinLink's political tactics, but the topic of this thread is busy frequency detection. Independently of why it might have been developed, the busy frequency detector in Scamp surprised many with its effectiveness, including its own developer. I'm assuming that Winmor's busy frequency detector is a descendent of Scamp's, as both were developed by Rick KN6KB. Hold your nose if you must, but I suggest that you evaluate Winmor's busy frequency detector before making additional claims about what is and is not possible. 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Charles Brabham Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:36 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect I knew one of the hams who first envisioned what would later end up being SCAMP, followed its development with interest, and was thoroughly disgusted at the way the WinLink group used those efforts as a cheap propaganda ploy instead of pursuing it honestly. SCAMP was at no point intended by the WinLink group to see actual use, its development was stretched out and used as a talking point for political purposes. As soon as its utility for that purpose became unsupportable, it was uncerimoniously killed. At no point did the WinLink group intend to phase out the use of the SCS harmful interference mills. This still holds true today. WinMore is just one more SCAMP, unfortunately. Knowing the level of character and intelligence to be found in the WinLink group, I have not followed WinMore's development. - I already know it's fate. After stretching out its supposed development for as long as possible, milking it for political traction ( We are working on ending our widespread inteference - honest! ) there will come the inevitable point where it is reluctantly admitted that WinMore just cannot do the job nearly as well as PACTOR III and then all of a sudden, you won't hear anything more about WinMore. The thing that the ARRL, the FCC, and all amateurs should understand is that WinLink will never be reformed. They hope to become so thoroughly established with delaying tactics like SCAMP and WinMore that eventually the FCC will throw up their hands and award them private spectrum of their own, or re-write PART97 so that we no longer enjoy the use of shared spectrum, thus bringing amateur radio to an end. They want a channelized, CB-like environment and the ARRL, to its discredit, is behind them 100%. As was the case with city and county entities forcing thier employees to get ham tickets as they pursued DHS grant money, and eventually starting to eye amateur radio spectrum as something to lobby for the possession of, our only real hope for a good outcome in this case is for the FCC to step in. We cannot hope for help or support from the ARRL, which again is part of the problem. So no, I have not followed WinMore's development at all, since I already know its fate. Note how WinMore is not open source but is strictly proprietary to the WinLink group, just like SCAMP was. They will be using this control to be sure that it is not developed further or used for any other purpose by anyone else. When they decide to kill it, they will want it to stay dead. - Just as dead as SCAMP is today. 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org - Original Message - From: Dave AA6YQ To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 10:50 PM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Did you evaluate the busy frequency detector in Scamp, Charles? Have you evaluated the busy frequency detector in Winmor? 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Charles Brabham Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 9:55 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Packet radio gets by with a simple carrier detect, PACTOR can only detect other PACTOR stations, and from what I can tell, ALE has no busy detection at all. Several years ago I took a serious look at automated busy detection, and always ran across the same stone wall: A more sophisticated busy detect that can usually tell the difference between noise and a human activity like speech or digital transmissions is possible - BUT - only after the software has a fairly long audio sample to work with, and can look back upon that sample. It can't do this instantly, or even very quickly unless you have a supercomputer to work with. If it listens to a long sample and a new signal comes in toward the end of that sample, that new signal may or may not end up being identified. This is a terrible thing to have to report, but Packet's carrier detect is the most effective and
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
Rick Karlquist wrote: That reminds me. During the CW Sweepstakes 2 weeks ago, I was trying to operate on ~7030 and bursts of RTTY-sounding stuff kept coming on the frequency for 5 or 10 seconds every once in a while. Is that ALE? That was not ALE, as the common frequencies used for ALE are up in the higher parts of the band for US ops and for all unattended, in the automatic sub-bands as defined by the FCC. Might could have been Euro ALE, but I doubt it, and you are in their voice band, so all types of QRM could be there. Likely it was exactly what you described it as: RTTY of one form or another. Have fun, Alan km4ba
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
At no point did the WinLink group intend to phase out the use of the SCS harmful interference mills. This still holds true today. Now Charles just don't pick on the SCS TNC. The PK-232 is the same way And while we are at it let's add that packet group. I hear more the one stations transmitting at the same time a lot. Since the Pactor freq that I like to hang out is real close by. John, W0JAB Louisiana, Missouri
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
Alan Barrow wrote: Rick Karlquist wrote: That reminds me. During the CW Sweepstakes 2 weeks ago, I was trying to operate on ~7030 and bursts of RTTY-sounding stuff kept coming on the frequency for 5 or 10 seconds every once in a while. Is that ALE? That was not ALE, as the common frequencies used for ALE are up in the higher parts of the band for US ops and for all unattended, in the automatic sub-bands as defined by the FCC. Might could have been Euro ALE, but I doubt it, and you are in their voice band, so all types of QRM could be there. Likely it was exactly what you described it as: RTTY of one form or another. Have fun, Alan km4ba I think I was actually on 7040, which someone else pointed out is an automatic frequency. BTW, the Euro voice band is now 7100 to 7200, but it was never as low as 7040 except during Phone contests. If all automatic stuff is confined to 7040, I think it can coexist fine with contesters; we can just avoid that frequency like we avoid the slow scan frequencies on 20 meters. It isn't worth arguing with the 14.230 MHz frequency police. Rick N6RK
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
KH6TY wrote: Your prejudice is obviously showing! (Uh - long live HFlink and others that run unattended transmitters outside the beacon bands and transmit without checking for a clear frequency???) With tongue in cheek: your ignorance is showing (in the misinformed sense, no insult implied) All unattended ALE operation associated with HFLINK operates solely in the band segments set aside by the FCC for automatic operation, including unattended. It's a very narrow slice in each band, and quite full of packet BBS, winlink, and ALE. Given the huge (comparatively) segments where narrow modes (rtty, psk, etc) are allowed that are free from competition, I don't see just cause for complaint. You may not like it, but it's an allowed operation mode in an allowed band segment. ALE activity in other portions of the band is attended mode, with the same guidelines/recommendations for listen before transmit. The point Charles is making is that transmitting without listening is simply exceptionally inconsiderate on shared frequencies by all widely accepted standards of behavior, but you obviously do not get it, and I guess you really don't want to, do you... Simply put, frequency sharing means not using a frequency unless you have made a reasonable attempt to verify it is not being used. There is no technology yet implemented that makes this possible for an unattended station. So help me out, how does the repeated rtty transmissions in contest weekends handle this? I see 100x the examples of xmit without listening during rtty contests then all the semi-auto modes put together? Lot's of the (perceived) issue is the classic hidden terminal nature of radio you may think a frequency is clear because you hear nothing, but in fact, it's a qso in progress where you can only hear one end. You fire up, and turns out you just stomped on someone. Happens on voice, cw, psk, RTTY, it's equal opportunity. BTW, no one asks in psk is the frequency in use?. So you add a magic frequency is occupied device to your digi mode. You are legitimately on a frequency, in a digi qso. Yet someone who does not the remote station (hidden) fires up, and stays fired up. At that point, your anti-qrm tripped, and you just lost the frequency, and your qso is terminated. They are in a different mode, and did not ask is the frequency is in use. You would not have decoded it if they did. Happens all the time. Some versions of ALE software have reasonable busy freq detectors. Winkink has deployed tested busy detection. Yet in real life it's unusable, as it pretty much derails any legit qso in progress when other folks (cw, rtty, pactor, whatever) fire up. And when it's been deployed in the winlink world, there has clearly been intentional QRM to hold off the digi's. I see it even now on the ALE net freq's in the auto sub-band: lot's of space in the cw bands, even for no-code/novice. Yet a cw station will fire up in the center of the ALE, packet, and winlink all sharing a few khz for unattended operation. My view, it's tantamount intentional QRM, as there is a 100% chance of a digi station being queried by a hidden terminal. I've even heard them joke about it in the CW qso. It would be a wonderful world if there was a workable solution. I've tried in the past, and would try again, any workable approach. But what I find is that the anti-digital hams (including some rtty) will absolutely take advantage of any good faith attempts to derail legal activity they don't like. Personally, I don't think this will ever be resolved until each band is sliced by bandwidth nature of operation (wide/narrow, analog/digi, attended/auto). We'd all lose, but since no one will compromise, there's not an alternative. Have fun, Alan km4ba
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
DANNY DOUGLAS thoughtfully asks: We already require this of CW/SSB/RTTY/PSK etc. users. Why should a user of these higher-newer modes not be held to the same requirements? How is busy channel detection done in PSK or RTTY? people listen for a bit then, transmit. It's not common practice, nor is there an easy way to ask is the frequency in use like in voice. CW ops sometimes ask, but not as common. So all digi'ish modes typically fail the hidden terminal detection, which is the majority of QRM. With PSK transmissions taking as long as they do, very few ops listen on a frequency long enough to determine that there is no qso in process. I've commented previously, all HFLINK related ALE operation is confined to band segments where automated operation is allowed. And yes, that means there is risk of hidden terminal interference like with all radio. All other ALE operation is in attended mode, no soundings, and only semi-auto response when queried by another station. At my ALE station, clicking the mic PTT terminates the digi transmission. So in attended mode I can kill or hold off any semi-auto response. I do whenever needed. 99% of the time it's someone interfering with my qso in progress, but I still hold it off. Since the HFLink promoted practice is to operate attended mode only outside of the auto sub-bands, you will find very few cases of interference in other band segments. If it does happen it's unintentional due to hidden terminal effect. No soundings, just hams calling kbd chat just like rtty/psk. Or using selcall (also allowed) in the voice bands. So yes, HFLink has promoted ALE operation. But it's also channeled that operation into areas to minimize unintentional interference to the limits of technology. And by defining net frequencies, have managed to focus even unattended operation away from frequencies used by incompatible uses. (QRP, PSK, SSTV, etc) The significant majority (up in the 95-99%) of ALE activity is on one 3khz frequency per band. Yep, a full 3khz, widely published. And contending with packet bbs's, winlink pactor, and many other modes. You might find some kbd qso's on ALE on another defined freq per band. And the normal HFPack voice net frequencies may see occasional (very rare) ALE selcall's, but no other ALE activity. Likewise, we've tuned and tried to standardize the various ALE settings to make it ham friendly. This is everything from call duration, to the various arcane ALE settings. Your question is a valid one, and we've tried very hard to practice good neighbor policies. I like to think we do better than many user groups. I find it hard to reconcile the bedlam your average RTTY contest weekend with complaints about ALE operation. But we feel an obligation to practice good neighbor operation, and wish others would do the same. Have fun, Alan km4ba
[digitalradio] Re: QRV ALE special group
Hi Andy, That presents some food for thought for those that want to scan for both tradtional ALE and ALE400 at the same time and also take advantage of the QS/S radio control support that I coded into PC-ALE. If you are interested in testing and Patrick is interested in adding an enabling feature to generate some TCP/IP commands at the proper time, then we should be anble to bring about a more complete solution by making use ohe Man Machine Interface (MMI) in PC-ALE via Telnet. It would be no problem to STOP and START the scanning process vis commands from MultiPSK when it detects ALE400, however there is at present no MMI command to release the RESOURCES to move forward with control of RS-232 port lines for PTT etc., however that could be added. Let know via direct e-mail or th HFlink forum as I only read messages here sporadically. /s/ Steve, N2CKH www/n2ckh.com/PC_ALE_FORUM/ --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Andy obrien k3uka...@... wrote: actually, I am now doing both...in a crude way. PC-ALE is controlling my rig and scanning standard ALE . I also have Multipsk running, not scanning, but it will sound an alert if a ALE400 signal is detected. PC-ALE will not pause however, since it does not know anything about ALE400, so I am not sure if this method will do anything or not. I'll test and see, The main reason I have Multipsk up is that I can easily switch to a different digital mode of I receive a connect/link from an ALE station. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] 7030 QRM
Rick Karlquist wrote: Andy obrien wrote: Rick, not likely . ALE mostly uses Actually, now that I think about it, I was trying to use 7040. If this was the case and it was ALE, it was not from the US. I was most likely european, and you were in their digi sub-band. Lot's of other potential QRM from the mis-alignment of the US 40m amateur allocation. Yep, we are the ones not operating by the international band plans. Have fun, Alan
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
Dave: If WinMore was in the public domain, you might have a point there. When the WinLink group deep-sixes their proprietary software, then who can use it? 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org - Original Message - From: Dave AA6YQ To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:29 PM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect I am fully aware of WinLink's political tactics, but the topic of this thread is busy frequency detection. Independently of why it might have been developed, the busy frequency detector in Scamp surprised many with its effectiveness, including its own developer. I'm assuming that Winmor's busy frequency detector is a descendent of Scamp's, as both were developed by Rick KN6KB. Hold your nose if you must, but I suggest that you evaluate Winmor's busy frequency detector before making additional claims about what is and is not possible. 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Charles Brabham Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:36 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect I knew one of the hams who first envisioned what would later end up being SCAMP, followed its development with interest, and was thoroughly disgusted at the way the WinLink group used those efforts as a cheap propaganda ploy instead of pursuing it honestly. SCAMP was at no point intended by the WinLink group to see actual use, its development was stretched out and used as a talking point for political purposes. As soon as its utility for that purpose became unsupportable, it was uncerimoniously killed. At no point did the WinLink group intend to phase out the use of the SCS harmful interference mills. This still holds true today. WinMore is just one more SCAMP, unfortunately. Knowing the level of character and intelligence to be found in the WinLink group, I have not followed WinMore's development. - I already know it's fate. After stretching out its supposed development for as long as possible, milking it for political traction ( We are working on ending our widespread inteference - honest! ) there will come the inevitable point where it is reluctantly admitted that WinMore just cannot do the job nearly as well as PACTOR III and then all of a sudden, you won't hear anything more about WinMore. The thing that the ARRL, the FCC, and all amateurs should understand is that WinLink will never be reformed. They hope to become so thoroughly established with delaying tactics like SCAMP and WinMore that eventually the FCC will throw up their hands and award them private spectrum of their own, or re-write PART97 so that we no longer enjoy the use of shared spectrum, thus bringing amateur radio to an end. They want a channelized, CB-like environment and the ARRL, to its discredit, is behind them 100%. As was the case with city and county entities forcing thier employees to get ham tickets as they pursued DHS grant money, and eventually starting to eye amateur radio spectrum as something to lobby for the possession of, our only real hope for a good outcome in this case is for the FCC to step in. We cannot hope for help or support from the ARRL, which again is part of the problem. So no, I have not followed WinMore's development at all, since I already know its fate. Note how WinMore is not open source but is strictly proprietary to the WinLink group, just like SCAMP was. They will be using this control to be sure that it is not developed further or used for any other purpose by anyone else. When they decide to kill it, they will want it to stay dead. - Just as dead as SCAMP is today. 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org - Original Message - From: Dave AA6YQ To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 10:50 PM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Did you evaluate the busy frequency detector in Scamp, Charles? Have you evaluated the busy frequency detector in Winmor? 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Charles Brabham Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 9:55 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Packet radio gets by with a simple carrier detect, PACTOR can only detect other PACTOR stations, and from what I can tell, ALE has no busy detection at all. Several years ago I took a serious look at automated busy detection, and always ran across the same stone
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
Sorry John, but what you are witnessing is not Packet stations transmitting on top of each other. What you are seeing is AX25 allowing several stations to share the same slice of spectrum. AX25 works due to carrier detection. Packet TNC's will not transmit if there is a carrier on the air from another Packet station. ( or whatever else that transmits a carrier ) They wait so many milliseconds and try again. If the carrier is still there, it waits again. When it listens and hears no carrier, it transmits. There are occasions when two Packet stations literally transmit at the same time, but it is very rare. That's called a collision. By allowing six, eight, ten or more stations to utilize the same slice of spectrum, AX25 makes Packet one of the highest performiong modes in existence when it comes to spectral efficiency. - It gets more done for more hams - with less spectrum. The only thing at our disposal that actually beats AX25 Packet's spectral efficiency is Amateur Multicast Protocol ( AMP ). PACTOR III is one of the least spectrally efficient modes on the ham bands, if not the very least. A single station takes up 2.4 Khz to do what fifteen PSK31 stations could do with the same amount of spectrum. It is faster than most other digital modes, but not by a great margin, and that moderately higher speed comes with a very hefty price-tag in harmful interference to other hams. By monitoring a single WinLink frequency for one or perhaps two hours a day, I have logged over 150 instances of WinLink stations ruining other hams QSO's in the last year. If you interpolate this data for a projected eight-hour day, that's around a thousand ruined QSOs a year - on that single frequency. But WinLink operates on quite a few frequencies, both inside and outside of the autoforwarding sub-bands. The actual number of QSO's ruined by WinLink every year is probably in the nieghborhood of ten thousand. Tell us, John: How many ruined QSOs every year are you OK with, so that WinLink can move eMail over the ham bands a little bit faster than, say, NBEMS which does the same thing with a live operator on each end and as close to zero instances of harmful interference as is humanly possible? This is something that we should all be thinking about. - The number of ruined QSOs that the FCC thinks is OK is zero. 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org - Original Message - From: John Becker, WØJAB To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:58 PM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect At no point did the WinLink group intend to phase out the use of the SCS harmful interference mills. This still holds true today. Now Charles just don't pick on the SCS TNC. The PK-232 is the same way And while we are at it let's add that packet group. I hear more the one stations transmitting at the same time a lot. Since the Pactor freq that I like to hang out is real close by. John, W0JAB Louisiana, Missouri
RE: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
re So you add a magic frequency is occupied device to your digi mode. You are legitimately on a frequency, in a digi qso. Yet someone who does not the remote station (hidden) fires up, and stays fired up. At that point, your anti-qrm tripped, and you just lost the frequency, and your qso is terminated. This would only be true of an extremely naive implementation of a busy frequency detector. The purpose of a busy frequency detector is to prevent an unattended station from initiating a QSO (or responding to a request to initiate a QSO) on a frequency that is already busy. If the unattended station is already in QSO, detection of a signal other than that of its QSO partner would not terminate the QSO. re Lot's of the (perceived) issue is the classic hidden terminal nature of radio you may think a frequency is clear because you hear nothing, but in fact, it's a qso in progress where you can only hear one end. You fire up, and turns out you just stomped on someone. Happens on voice, cw, psk, RTTY, it's equal opportunity. Yes, this does happen, but you neglected to describe the rest of the scenario. The end that you can hear says QRL, pse QSY, and most operators quickly oblige. In contrast, unattended automatic stations *cannot* oblige; they blithely QRM away. An unattended station with a proper busy frequency detector would have likely been monitoring the frequency long enough to detect the copiable half of the QSO already in progress, and thus would never have transmitted on the first place. re Happens all the time. Some versions of ALE software have reasonable busy freq detectors. Winkink has deployed tested busy detection. Yet in real life it's unusable, as it pretty much derails any legit qso in progress when other folks (cw, rtty, pactor, whatever) fire up. The naive busy frequency detector, again. re And when it's been deployed in the winlink world, there has clearly been intentional QRM to hold off the digi's Yes, Winlink has generated an enormous amount of ill will, to the point where some ops have become so angry that they will waste their time QRMing an automatic station. There is no excuse for this illegal behavior, but its *ludicrous* to use this as an excuse to avoid eliminating the problem by deploying busy frequency detectors. Once Winlink and other unattended automatic stations reduce their QRM rate to something approaching that of the average human operator, the anger will dissipate and the QRMing of automatic stations will dissappear. 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Alan Barrow Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:14 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor KH6TY wrote: Your prejudice is obviously showing! (Uh - long live HFlink and others that run unattended transmitters outside the beacon bands and transmit without checking for a clear frequency???) With tongue in cheek: your ignorance is showing (in the misinformed sense, no insult implied) All unattended ALE operation associated with HFLINK operates solely in the band segments set aside by the FCC for automatic operation, including unattended. It's a very narrow slice in each band, and quite full of packet BBS, winlink, and ALE. Given the huge (comparatively) segments where narrow modes (rtty, psk, etc) are allowed that are free from competition, I don't see just cause for complaint. You may not like it, but it's an allowed operation mode in an allowed band segment. ALE activity in other portions of the band is attended mode, with the same guidelines/recommendations for listen before transmit. The point Charles is making is that transmitting without listening is simply exceptionally inconsiderate on shared frequencies by all widely accepted standards of behavior, but you obviously do not get it, and I guess you really don't want to, do you... Simply put, frequency sharing means not using a frequency unless you have made a reasonable attempt to verify it is not being used. There is no technology yet implemented that makes this possible for an unattended station. So help me out, how does the repeated rtty transmissions in contest weekends handle this? I see 100x the examples of xmit without listening during rtty contests then all the semi-auto modes put together? Lot's of the (perceived) issue is the classic hidden terminal nature of radio you may think a frequency is clear because you hear nothing, but in fact, it's a qso in progress where you can only hear one end. You fire up, and turns out you just stomped on someone. Happens on voice, cw, psk, RTTY, it's equal opportunity. BTW, no one asks in psk is the frequency in use?. So you add a magic frequency is occupied device to your digi mode. You are legitimately on a frequency, in a digi qso. Yet someone who does not the remote station (hidden)
[digitalradio] Steerable Notch Filter
Soundcard software users: Try turning on your notch filter and slowly steering the notch around the waterfall. It's great for covering up splattery or adjacent signals. 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
Sure, there's an alternative! - How about operating in compliance with PART97, which prohibits harmful interference? 73 DE Charles Brabham, N5PVL Prefer to use radio for your amateur radio communications? - Stop by at HamRadioNet.Org ! http://www.hamradionet.org Personally, I don't think this will ever be resolved until each band is sliced by bandwidth nature of operation (wide/narrow, analog/digi, attended/auto). We'd all lose, but since no one will compromise, there's not an alternative. Have fun, Alan km4ba
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
KH6TY wrote: There are VHF contests that are limited to only certain bands out of all available. There are HF contests for just phone, or CW or RTTY, so it should be no problem for HF contest sponsors to only allow credit for Q's made between certain frequencies on each band. I do radio with boy scout troops when camping. And find increasingly, that contests are making weekend operation very difficult. It's hard to find a weekend without a major contest, sometimes more than one. Like many hams say about something they are not involved in, I don't mind contesting, but find it violates many good neighbor policies. Enough that if I listen and hear it's a contest weekend, I don't bother to try to demonstrate radio to the scouts, or even just make casual qso's. Just not worth the frustration. I'd like to see a voluntary approach like you described. Add multiplier if you stay out of the top x% of the voice band, or avoid psk sub-bands in a RTTY contest. IE: implement a good neighbor approach to not taking over 100% of a given band segment for the contest. Same number of contacts will take place, it will just happen over a longer period. So you won't have stations Sunday afternoon hitting autokey CQ contest six times for hours at end without response. I've heard a rtty station do that 1-2 hours on an common ALE frequency without contact. The issue is that most HF contests do not require (or even check) the frequency of operation, just band. I'm good friends with a very avid contester (not that there's anything wrong with that) who is also a scout leader, and even he is now starting to see the negative impact on non-contesters. All that said, I see this issue going away in a decade or two. :-) Have fun, Alan km4ba
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
Charles Brabham wrote: Packet radio gets by with a simple carrier detect, PACTOR can only detect other PACTOR stations, and from what I can tell, ALE has no busy detection at all. Absolutely not the case. ALE listen's before transmit for other ALE by protocol. And the commonly used ham implementation has a busy detection mode that works for rtty, carrier, and most CW. Just does OK on voice, but that's less of an issue as any operation in the voice sub-bands are attended. Problem is, just like other mode operators have found out, it's unworkable as the majority of legal, in progress qso's will be derailed by someone else firing up. Since the CW op has no way to ask in ALE, PSK, whatever mode is the frequency in use, all they can do is interfere. so the mythical busy detection software would have to have a way to answer back sorry OM, the frequency is in use in every imaginable mode. I see this in the PSK bands by CW RTTY ops, and happens to pretty much any digi mode. It's not unique to ALE for sure. Fact: Radio is vulnerable to hidden terminal effect like most shared media. We live in that world. And because of that, there will be some unintentional interference. Regarding busy detection, I've posted youtube video's of ALE's busy detection in action. Packet's is not the most effective, by any means. All that said, until there is mutual respect of the digi modes right to exist, no one will widely use the busy detection as it's too easy to hold off or interfere with a station running it. see it happen every day on the busy ALE frequencies, and for sure this has soured winlink on busy detection. It's not technology, it's your fellow hams. When I see all psk ops wait for 2 complete transmission cycles to ensure there is no hidden terminal effect, then ask is the frequency in use before transmitting I'll concede. Same for RTTY. Until then, it's just one mode complaining about the other, and we won't see progress. Have fun, Alan km4ba
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
Alan Barrow wrote: I do radio with boy scout troops when camping. And find increasingly, that contests are making weekend operation very difficult. It's hard to find a weekend without a major contest, sometimes more than one. Have you tried 60, 30, 17 or 12 meters? No contests there. Rick N6RK
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect -Winmor
FYI, the author of Winmor advised me that 3rd party busy detect IS part of Winmor. If the client attempts to call the server and the server dtecets another signal, the connect is not allowed. This, as Dave has consutantly pointed out, is to be expected since the Winmor author has shown the ability to design a similar busy detect feature in SCAMP. Andy K3UK On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Phil Williams ka1...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, seen that myself. philw de ka1gmn On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Andy obrien k3uka...@gmail.com wrote: WINMOR's busy detect works perfectly at the initiating station's end, a pop-up windows tells you the frequency is in use and ask if you really want to go ahead and transmit. I have not seen it work at the other end, i.e. prevent another station connecting because a third party is also detected at the receive station's end. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
Rick Karlquist wrote: Have you tried 60, 30, 17 or 12 meters? No contests there. Yep, I'm a regular 60m user for that reason. And 30m for digital. 17m is of course one of the best options, but lately prop has not made it a good spot to demo for scouts. For that matter, 60m can be hard to scare up contacts outside of morning/evening. Have fun, Alan
[digitalradio] Re: Digital busy detect
+++ AA6YQ comments below --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Charles Brabham n5...@... wrote: If WinMore was in the public domain, you might have a point there. When the WinLink group deep-sixes their proprietary software, then who can use it? We are discussing what is and is not possible in the domain of busy detection. The capabilities of Winmor's busy frequency detector are what's relevant to this discussion, not its long-term disposition. A key result of Scamp was the recognition that a modest, first-iteration busy frequency detector performed remarkably well. 73, Dave, AA6YQ
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
I have seen the same thing. One of the problems is that 20 and 15 are the two dx freqs in the daytime, where we might reasonably contact other scouts, in the rest of the world. I.E. That is the typical Scout hangout for contacts. Most activity is late morning/early afternoon, because of other activities, such as cooking, eating, and traveling. We must work around all other regular Scout activities, in order to get a few hours in, on the air. Its not only that, but many people work all week, and the weekends are their sole period of time for hamming. If they like to DX at all, they have but one choice: join in the contests. Many simply do no like that. Frankly, I am tired of seeing the suggestion of trying other bands. Maybe they have only one antenna, or have pretty much worked those bands out (if and when we get some sunspots), or its daytime and the low bands are not open, or night and the high bands are not open. To tell someone that if they don't like contest interference, to go someplace else just seems a bit much to me. Id tell the contesters to go someplace else: like a specific portion of each band, and stay there, and allow others to enjoy their hobby also.Harken back to the old Novice Roundup. It was only on the Novice bands, gave plenty of time and space to Novices and anyone else who wished to join them, and was a real training ground for CW ops. By the way, IT WAS TWO WEEKS LONG, and I do not remember anyone complaining about interference, except Novices whose crystals put them slap atop a foreign broadcast station, who was out of their own international assignment areas (lots of those - Radio Moscow, Chinese broadcaster, Radio Tirana, etc). Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB All 2 years or more (except Novice). Short stints at: DA/PA/SU/HZ/7X/DU CR9/7Y/KH7/5A/GW/GM/F Pls QSL direct, buro, or LOTW preferred, I Do not use, but as a courtesy do upload to eQSL for those who do. Moderator DXandTALK http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk Digital_modes http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digital_modes/?yguid=341090159 - Original Message - From: Rick Karlquist To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:13 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor Alan Barrow wrote: I do radio with boy scout troops when camping. And find increasingly, that contests are making weekend operation very difficult. It's hard to find a weekend without a major contest, sometimes more than one. Have you tried 60, 30, 17 or 12 meters? No contests there. Rick N6RK
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect -Winmor
My only question here: Is this a required part of the program, or can it be turned on and off? Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB All 2 years or more (except Novice). Short stints at: DA/PA/SU/HZ/7X/DU CR9/7Y/KH7/5A/GW/GM/F Pls QSL direct, buro, or LOTW preferred, I Do not use, but as a courtesy do upload to eQSL for those who do. Moderator DXandTALK http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DXandTalk Digital_modes http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digital_modes/?yguid=341090159 - Original Message - From: Andy obrien To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:16 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect -Winmor FYI, the author of Winmor advised me that 3rd party busy detect IS part of Winmor. If the client attempts to call the server and the server dtecets another signal, the connect is not allowed. This, as Dave has consutantly pointed out, is to be expected since the Winmor author has shown the ability to design a similar busy detect feature in SCAMP. Andy K3UK On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Phil Williams ka1...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, seen that myself. philw de ka1gmn On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Andy obrien k3uka...@gmail.com wrote: WINMOR's busy detect works perfectly at the initiating station's end, a pop-up windows tells you the frequency is in use and ask if you really want to go ahead and transmit. I have not seen it work at the other end, i.e. prevent another station connecting because a third party is also detected at the receive station's end. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect- it's not a technology issue
Andy obrien wrote: FYI, the author of Winmor advised me that 3rd party busy detect IS part of Winmor. so what does it do when it's already involved in a qso, waiting to ack or transmit, and someone starts transmitting? That's the core issue, not detecting that a frequency is in use. Not many options, it can: A) backoff, and effectively abandon the frequency to the new station, even though they are the one who QRM'd B) Try to signal the interfering station in the mode (cw/rtty/clover/ax.25/psk/etc) that the station is using hmm, but that assumes the station is listening, so you have to wait for that station to stop, and try to get a break in. Meanwhile, your sending station you were originally in qso with has timed out! C) Go ahead and transmit anyway, since it was in qso already. Which will still generate complaints, as most of the perceived qrm is really hidden terminal issues and unintentional For any of the busy detection schemes to work, all stations have to be using it, and it would need to a universal freq is in use signal honored by all. The only other alternative is for all stations/modes: - Listen for 2X the average transmission length for the slowest mode possibly in use on the frequency to eliminate the chance of hidden terminal. - For most frequencies/modes, that would be CW or RTTY, so you are looking at a listen period of a minute or more. - Have some algorithm that factors in if you are in QSO vs just starting a QSO My view: This is not a technology issue, it's an operator expectation issue. we could have the miracle BD (busy detection) widget. But until ops in all modes started respecting listening for other modes, it won't work. Ex: The rtty guy in the middle of a qso has a cw op break in. He can't answer in rtty, and his radio is in fsk or ssb mode. IE: He can't just send CW to tell the interloper the freq is in use. And if he answered in rtty, the cw op would not decode it. Same for RTTY/CW in psk. (even worse, due to the long psk transmissions). Shift to ALE/Pactor, and it's even less likely that the op is setup for the mode. So all that said, what are the odds that the homebrew cw op is going to have have the miracle BD? The RTTY op? Ah, so we have the miracle BD send CW (universal) when someone starts qrm'ing a transmission in progress. You just blew any chance of receiving the data being sent by the station you are in qso with. And what is that signal? And will majority of ops respect that? when less less hams even know CW? Remember, you are asking the newer modes to implement this, how will the legacy modes do it? Do you really expect winlink et al to implement a scheme that would allow anyone to pre-empt (hold-off) their traffic, while not doing the same in return? Again, when someone can show me a scheme that queries the freq prior to usage on psk, I'll be convinced. Anything else is still subject to hidden terminal interference, and will still generate complaints. IE: Solve the problem for a legacy mode, and then we'll talk. I'd love to do peer review for such a scheme. We'll get the ARRL to send it out as best practices. Right. Don't mean to be negative, but it's far more complex than JSMOP. (Just A Small Matter Of Programming) Meanwhile, I'll operate ALE occasionally P3 in the auto sub-bands. And bite my tongue when I am qrm'd by RTTY, CW, and other PSK ops in the PSK sub-band. Have fun, Alan km4ba Suggested frequencies for calling CQ with experimental digital modes = 3584,10147, 14074 USB on your dial plus 1000Hz on waterfall. Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Pages at http://www.obriensweb.com/sked Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: digitalradio-dig...@yahoogroups.com digitalradio-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: digitalradio-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
re Problem is, just like other mode operators have found out, it's unworkable as the majority of legal, in progress qso's will be derailed by someone else firing up. Its only unworkable because the implementation of the busy frequency detector in question is obviously quite poor. re Since the CW op has no way to ask in ALE, PSK, whatever mode is the frequency in use, all they can do is interfere. so the mythical busy detection software would have to have a way to answer back sorry OM, the frequency is in use in every imaginable mode. No, an automatic station already in QSO need only respond with QRL in CW, which will be understood by the majority of attended stations. re Fact: Radio is vulnerable to hidden terminal effect like most shared media. We live in that world. And because of that, there will be some unintentional interference. This is rarely problem with attended stations; you might not hear one side of an in-progress QSO, but you will hear the other side, and be able to respond appropriately when the side you hear asks you to QSY. Only automated stations without busy frequency detectors suffer the vulnerability you describe here. Effective multi-mode busy frequency detection has been demonstrably feasible for years. Had a concerted effort been made to equip all automatic stations with competent busy frequency detectors, the rate of QSO breakage caused by such stations would have plummeted, the anger caused by this QSO breakage would have dissapated, and we'd be efficiently sharing spectrum in the pursuit of our diverse objectives. Instead, we've been treated to years of blatantly lame excuses as to why busy frequency detection either can't be designed, can't be implemented, can't be deployed, won't work, causes warts, causes cancer, causes global warming, or will cause the universe to expand forever. Few are fooled by this. 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Alan Barrow Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 8:14 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Charles Brabham wrote: Packet radio gets by with a simple carrier detect, PACTOR can only detect other PACTOR stations, and from what I can tell, ALE has no busy detection at all. Absolutely not the case. ALE listen's before transmit for other ALE by protocol. And the commonly used ham implementation has a busy detection mode that works for rtty, carrier, and most CW. Just does OK on voice, but that's less of an issue as any operation in the voice sub-bands are attended. Problem is, just like other mode operators have found out, it's unworkable as the majority of legal, in progress qso's will be derailed by someone else firing up. Since the CW op has no way to ask in ALE, PSK, whatever mode is the frequency in use, all they can do is interfere. so the mythical busy detection software would have to have a way to answer back sorry OM, the frequency is in use in every imaginable mode. I see this in the PSK bands by CW RTTY ops, and happens to pretty much any digi mode. It's not unique to ALE for sure. Fact: Radio is vulnerable to hidden terminal effect like most shared media. We live in that world. And because of that, there will be some unintentional interference. Regarding busy detection, I've posted youtube video's of ALE's busy detection in action. Packet's is not the most effective, by any means. All that said, until there is mutual respect of the digi modes right to exist, no one will widely use the busy detection as it's too easy to hold off or interfere with a station running it. see it happen every day on the busy ALE frequencies, and for sure this has soured winlink on busy detection. It's not technology, it's your fellow hams. When I see all psk ops wait for 2 complete transmission cycles to ensure there is no hidden terminal effect, then ask is the frequency in use before transmitting I'll concede. Same for RTTY. Until then, it's just one mode complaining about the other, and we won't see progress. Have fun, Alan km4ba
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
Scamp busy detector as used in Scamp at the time of the group testing I was part of, was NOT the end all of busy detectors. Finding a setting of the threshold was very difficult. Too sensitive and the throughput operation of Scamp was poor due to being held up by the threshold trigger. Not sensitive enough and it did not perform at times when you knew it should have. What worked for one type of band condition for awhile, did not work well during a different type of band condition. Personally witnessed operators that would intentionally come on frequency and put out signals solely for the purpose of triggering the busy detector to stop operations. When Scamp operations were not active, they didnt seem to be active on the frequency. Start Scamp activity and some of the same lids would start up again with just enough activity to activate the busy detector. End result was the agreement to not use it as it was not living up to expectations and stayed that way through the shut down of the group by the author. 73 from Bill - WD8ARZ
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect -Winmor
At the moment it can be turned off, On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:46 PM, DANNY DOUGLAS n...@comcast.net wrote: My only question here: Is this a required part of the program, or can it be turned on and off? Danny Douglas N7DC ex WN5QMX ET2US WA5UKR ET3USA SV0WPP VS6DD N7DC/YV5 G5CTB All 2 years or more (except Novice). Short stints at: DA/PA/SU/HZ/7X/DU CR9/7Y/KH7/5A/GW/GM/F Pls QSL direct, buro, or LOTW preferred,
Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
Dave AA6YQ wrote: Its only unworkable because the implementation of the busy frequency detector in question is obviously quite poor. Significantly more to it than that... unless *all* stations honor abide by common rules/tech, it simply won't work. This is true of just about any network, not just radio. (remember the FRACK wars back in packet days?) No, an automatic station already in QSO need only respond with QRL in CW, which will be understood by the majority of attended stations. With full respect: Yeah, right :-) You want me to hold off my transmissions automatically, but trust other ops (in other modes) to do the same. Voluntarily. Cross-mode. Right. Kindof like asking all cellphone users to install a device that allows anyone to disable their ringtone. Just what do you think the compliance on that would be? I agree CW QRL is probably the most universal approach, but you'd have to match the exact beat frequency of the cw sig for them to hear it. And be able to decode CW on the fly (CWget in all busy detectors) to honor it from others. This is rarely problem with attended stations; you might not hear one side of an in-progress QSO, but you will hear the other side, and be able to respond appropriately when the side you hear asks you to QSY. Only automated stations without busy frequency detectors suffer the vulnerability you describe here. Only true if you listen for 1-2X the average transmission length or do a ? query. Voice ops do that, because it's not cross mode, and transmission times are shorter. Digi modes do not do that by practice (even RTTY), the transmission times are longer, and the price of an interuptted transmission higher. (resend) And it's not rarely a problem in attended modes, I see it daily on PSK. Effective multi-mode busy frequency detection has been demonstrably feasible for years. Had a concerted effort been made to equip all automatic stations with competent busy frequency detectors, the rate of QSO breakage caused by such stations would have plummeted, the anger caused by this QSO breakage would have dissapated, and we'd be efficiently sharing spectrum in the pursuit of our diverse objectives. Instead, we've been treated to years of blatantly lame excuses as to why busy frequency detection either can't be designed, can't be implemented, can't be deployed, won't work, causes warts, causes cancer, causes global warming, or will cause the universe to expand forever. Few are fooled by this. OK, here's the challenge: Demonstrate it's feasibility if it's JSMOP. Implement one that balances the right of the sending station not to be QRM'd VS the expectation not to QRM. Publish an API a spec (turnaround times, etc). IE: Not a passive (hold off) detector Make it open source so that all coders can leverage refine it. Windows assumption is OK, but we could probably find a lock/semaphore system that is multiplatform. But a windows DLL API would satisfy 90% of the commonly used digi programs. Will have to codify a standard that would allow any program to grab soundcard resources (to monitor as well as send the qrl) along with any cat/ptt required. Or maybe you let the digi program figure out how to send CW QRL, that would be close enough. Do so and I bet we could get the major coders (Certainly DXlab's coder) to roll it in. I'll commit to influencing the major ALE coders to try to integrate. (Steve/Charles/Patrick) We could get Simon on board. Rick is already mostly there. I won't commit for CJX/winlink, as he's been burned by BD more than once. RTTY will be more difficult, but will come with time. Lot's of legacy users of mmtty! Can't just be a passive (hold off) detector, needs to signal QRL and honor QRL signals from others. Independent of your filter that of the other station. (IE: interfering CW op using 500hz filter, you'll have to match his freq pretty darn close) Meanwhile, I'll be in the 7102 bedlam with the rest of the users. Have fun, Alan km4ba
Re: [digitalradio] Disinformation about ALE by N5PVL Re: Getting serious about ALE / LID factor
DANNY DOUGLAS wrote: I have seen the same thing. One of the problems is that 20 and 15 are the two dx freqs in the daytime, where we might reasonably contact other scouts, in the rest of the world. I.E. That is the typical Scout If those bands are open, 17 meters will be open. I have had pileups of Europeans call me on 17 meters. For most of the recent DXpeditions, 17 meters has been the money band. Lots of rare DX on there. You can work DX all night long on 30 meters after 20 is closed. It is also great for DXpeditions. Rick N6RK
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect- it's not a technology issue
AA6YQ comments below -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Alan Barrow Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:57 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect- it's not a technology issue Andy obrien wrote: FYI, the author of Winmor advised me that 3rd party busy detect IS part of Winmor. so what does it do when it's already involved in a qso, waiting to ack or transmit, and someone starts transmitting? That's the core issue, not detecting that a frequency is in use. Not many options, it can: A) backoff, and effectively abandon the frequency to the new station, even though they are the one who QRM'd There is no reason to do this, presuming that the frequency was clear before your QSO began B) Try to signal the interfering station in the mode (cw/rtty/clover/ax.25/psk/etc) that the station is using hmm, but that assumes the station is listening, so you have to wait for that station to stop, and try to get a break in. Meanwhile, your sending station you were originally in qso with has timed out! Wait until the offending signal dissappears, send QRL QRL in CW, and either initiate reconnection or await connection as dictated by the protocol. C) Go ahead and transmit anyway, since it was in qso already. Which will still generate complaints, as most of the perceived qrm is really hidden terminal issues and unintentional No, most of the perceived QRM is not the result of attended stations breaking in on an on-going QSO in which one of the stations is automatic. Several years ago, I monitored WinLink PMBOs with my SCS PTC-IIe. In every case where QRM occured, it was the result of a PMBO responding to a connection request on a frequency that was already in use. For any of the busy detection schemes to work, all stations have to be using it, and it would need to a universal freq is in use signal honored by all. No, only unattended automatic stations need include a busy frequency detector. As suggested earlier, QRL is a universal freq in use signal that will be honored by most attended stations. As long as an unattended automatic station never initiates transmission on a frequency that is in use, then it will rarely QRM an on-going QSO, and thus need not have the means to detect a QRL sent by an attended station. The only collision scenario that is not covered is change in propagation, where two QSOs that were initially sharing a frequency without interfering with each other begin hearing each other because propagation has changed; if one of these QSOs involves an unattended automatic station, it will by the above rules either complete its QSO (if the QRM doesn't prevent it), or break off (if the QRM impedes communication). The only other alternative is for all stations/modes: - Listen for 2X the average transmission length for the slowest mode possibly in use on the frequency to eliminate the chance of hidden terminal. - For most frequencies/modes, that would be CW or RTTY, so you are looking at a listen period of a minute or more. When not in QSO, an automatic station monitors its frequency continuously, so it very well knows whether or not another QSO is in progress on that frequency, even if it can only copy one side of that QSO. - Have some algorithm that factors in if you are in QSO vs just starting a QSO Obviously. My view: This is not a technology issue, it's an operator expectation issue. we could have the miracle BD (busy detection) widget. But until ops in all modes started respecting listening for other modes, it won't work. The scheme described above is straightforward to implement and will prevent QRM most of the time. As I pointed out to Rick KN6KB while attempting to persuade him to implement a busy frequency detector in Scamp, a scheme that's only 80% effective would reduce the incidence of QSOs broken by automatic stations by a factor of 5. Ex: The rtty guy in the middle of a qso has a cw op break in. He can't answer in rtty, and his radio is in fsk or ssb mode. IE: He can't just send CW to tell the interloper the freq is in use. Certainly he can; I have done so. This is easier in FSK where the transceiver is displaying the mark frequency; digital mode apps could easily be extended to automate this operation. Same for RTTY/CW in psk. (even worse, due to the long psk transmissions). Shift to ALE/Pactor, and it's even less likely that the op is setup for the mode. Saving your PSK frequency, changing mode to CW, sending QRL, and returning to PSK is just not that difficult. It certainly beats losing your PSK QSO. So all that said, what are the odds that the homebrew cw op is going to have have the miracle BD? The RTTY op? There is no reason for an attended station to have a busy frequency detector; the operator's ears are generally sufficient. Only unattended automatic stations require a busy frequency detector. Ah, so we have the miracle BD send CW
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
AA6YQ comments below -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of WD8ARZ Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:06 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Scamp busy detector as used in Scamp at the time of the group testing I was part of, was NOT the end all of busy detectors. Correct. It was a first attempt somewhat reluctantly taken by the author with encouragement from me and several others. Finding a setting of the threshold was very difficult. Too sensitive and the throughput operation of Scamp was poor due to being held up by the threshold trigger. Not sensitive enough and it did not perform at times when you knew it should have. What worked for one type of band condition for awhile, did not work well during a different type of band condition. There were quite a few more positive reports from Scamp beta testers posted on this forum at the time. Personally witnessed operators that would intentionally come on frequency and put out signals solely for the purpose of triggering the busy detector to stop operations. When Scamp operations were not active, they didnt seem to be active on the frequency. Start Scamp activity and some of the same lids would start up again with just enough activity to activate the busy detector. This hardly a good reason to not move forward with a mechanism that would reduce the ill-will responsible for these actions. End result was the agreement to not use it as it was not living up to expectations and stayed that way through the shut down of the group by the author. Scamp was terminated because the RDFT protocol on which it was based performed poorly under typical band conditions. Rick KN6KB evidently reached a different conclusion than you did regarding the efficacy of busy frequency detection, as he included busy frequency detection in Winmor. 73, Dave, AA6YQ
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
+++ AA6YQ comments below -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Alan Barrow Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:30 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Dave AA6YQ wrote: Its only unworkable because the implementation of the busy frequency detector in question is obviously quite poor. Significantly more to it than that... unless *all* stations honor abide by common rules/tech, it simply won't work. This is true of just about any network, not just radio. (remember the FRACK wars back in packet days?) +++The rules to be honored by all stations are: 1. if you're not yet in QSO, don't transmit on a frequency that is already in use (meaning that signals have been detected during the past 5 minutes) 2. if you're in QSO and signal other than that of your QSO partner appears (the busy frequency detector indicates the presence of signal, but you aren't decoding your QSO partner), wait for that signal to disappear, send QRL QRL in CW, and resume your QSO +++There is nothing complicated about this. Automation is only required in unattended automatic stations. No, an automatic station already in QSO need only respond with QRL in CW, which will be understood by the majority of attended stations. With full respect: Yeah, right :-) You want me to hold off my transmissions automatically, but trust other ops (in other modes) to do the same. Voluntarily. Cross-mode. Right. +++Amateur radio operators have been trusting each other to mutually obey these rules since the service began. On what possible basis can you claim exemption? Kindof like asking all cellphone users to install a device that allows anyone to disable their ringtone. Just what do you think the compliance on that would be? +++No, its not remotely like asking cellphone users to install such a device; there is no parallel whatsoever. I agree CW QRL is probably the most universal approach, but you'd have to match the exact beat frequency of the cw sig for them to hear it. And be able to decode CW on the fly (CWget in all busy detectors) to honor it from others. +++Only attended stations need detect the QRL; if automatic stations never transmit on a frequency that is in use, then they will rarely QRM an ongoing QSO, and so have no need of automatic QRL detection. This is rarely problem with attended stations; you might not hear one side of an in-progress QSO, but you will hear the other side, and be able to respond appropriately when the side you hear asks you to QSY. Only automated stations without busy frequency detectors suffer the vulnerability you describe here. Only true if you listen for 1-2X the average transmission length or do a ? query. Voice ops do that, because it's not cross mode, and transmission times are shorter. Digi modes do not do that by practice (even RTTY), the transmission times are longer, and the price of an interuptted transmission higher. (resend) +++When not in QSO, automatic stations can easily monitor the frequency to determine whether a QSO is in progress, even if they are only hearing one of the stations involved; this is easily implemented. If an automatic station receives a connection request and its busy frequency detector has seen no activity for the past 5 minutes, it can respond to the request without compunction. If its busy frequency detector has been intermittently reporting signals over the past 5 minutes, it should not respond. And it's not rarely a problem in attended modes, I see it daily on PSK. +++I didn't say it rarely occurs, I said its rarely a problem -- because attended stations can communicate with each other and resolve the conflict, thereby preserving the QSO in progress. Unattended automatic stations are incapable of doing this. Effective multi-mode busy frequency detection has been demonstrably feasible for years. Had a concerted effort been made to equip all automatic stations with competent busy frequency detectors, the rate of QSO breakage caused by such stations would have plummeted, the anger caused by this QSO breakage would have dissapated, and we'd be efficiently sharing spectrum in the pursuit of our diverse objectives. Instead, we've been treated to years of blatantly lame excuses as to why busy frequency detection either can't be designed, can't be implemented, can't be deployed, won't work, causes warts, causes cancer, causes global warming, or will cause the universe to expand forever. Few are fooled by this. OK, here's the challenge: Demonstrate it's feasibility if it's JSMOP. Implement one that balances the right of the sending station not to be QRM'd VS the expectation not to QRM. Publish an API a spec (turnaround times, etc). IE: Not a passive (hold off) detector Make it open source so that all coders can leverage refine it. Windows assumption is OK, but we could probably find a lock/semaphore system that is multiplatform.
RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect
To be clear, an attended station need not wait for 5 minutes of clear frequency before transmitting; 30 seconds of no signals (meaning no automatic station is QRV) followed by a QRL? sent in mode with no response should be sufficient. 73, Dave, AA6YQ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Dave AA6YQ Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 2:29 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect +++ AA6YQ comments below -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Alan Barrow Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:30 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Digital busy detect Dave AA6YQ wrote: Its only unworkable because the implementation of the busy frequency detector in question is obviously quite poor. Significantly more to it than that... unless *all* stations honor abide by common rules/tech, it simply won't work. This is true of just about any network, not just radio. (remember the FRACK wars back in packet days?) +++The rules to be honored by all stations are: 1. if you're not yet in QSO, don't transmit on a frequency that is already in use (meaning that signals have been detected during the past 5 minutes) 2. if you're in QSO and signal other than that of your QSO partner appears (the busy frequency detector indicates the presence of signal, but you aren't decoding your QSO partner), wait for that signal to disappear, send QRL QRL in CW, and resume your QSO +++There is nothing complicated about this. Automation is only required in unattended automatic stations. No, an automatic station already in QSO need only respond with QRL in CW, which will be understood by the majority of attended stations. With full respect: Yeah, right :-) You want me to hold off my transmissions automatically, but trust other ops (in other modes) to do the same. Voluntarily. Cross-mode. Right. +++Amateur radio operators have been trusting each other to mutually obey these rules since the service began. On what possible basis can you claim exemption? Kindof like asking all cellphone users to install a device that allows anyone to disable their ringtone. Just what do you think the compliance on that would be? +++No, its not remotely like asking cellphone users to install such a device; there is no parallel whatsoever. I agree CW QRL is probably the most universal approach, but you'd have to match the exact beat frequency of the cw sig for them to hear it. And be able to decode CW on the fly (CWget in all busy detectors) to honor it from others. +++Only attended stations need detect the QRL; if automatic stations never transmit on a frequency that is in use, then they will rarely QRM an ongoing QSO, and so have no need of automatic QRL detection. This is rarely problem with attended stations; you might not hear one side of an in-progress QSO, but you will hear the other side, and be able to respond appropriately when the side you hear asks you to QSY. Only automated stations without busy frequency detectors suffer the vulnerability you describe here. Only true if you listen for 1-2X the average transmission length or do a ? query. Voice ops do that, because it's not cross mode, and transmission times are shorter. Digi modes do not do that by practice (even RTTY), the transmission times are longer, and the price of an interuptted transmission higher. (resend) +++When not in QSO, automatic stations can easily monitor the frequency to determine whether a QSO is in progress, even if they are only hearing one of the stations involved; this is easily implemented. If an automatic station receives a connection request and its busy frequency detector has seen no activity for the past 5 minutes, it can respond to the request without compunction. If its busy frequency detector has been intermittently reporting signals over the past 5 minutes, it should not respond. And it's not rarely a problem in attended modes, I see it daily on PSK. +++I didn't say it rarely occurs, I said its rarely a problem -- because attended stations can communicate with each other and resolve the conflict, thereby preserving the QSO in progress. Unattended automatic stations are incapable of doing this. Effective multi-mode busy frequency detection has been demonstrably feasible for years. Had a concerted effort been made to equip all automatic stations with competent busy frequency detectors, the rate of QSO breakage caused by such stations would have plummeted, the anger caused by this QSO breakage would have dissapated, and we'd be efficiently sharing spectrum in the pursuit of our diverse objectives. Instead, we've been treated to years of blatantly lame excuses as to why busy frequency detection either can't be designed, can't be implemented, can't be deployed, won't work, causes warts, causes cancer, causes
