OT: SO-67 Operations
BMJ
stations I've worked before. The downlink was strong (S9+ sometimes),
though often garbled due to the pileup.
Once AMSAT SA gets the bugs worked out, it's going to be a good bird.
That'll make five LEO FM platforms once the cross-band repeater on the ISS
is re-activated.
Me, again!
I've got to get back into that. Most of my spare time recently has gone
into the CW decoding programs. My endpoint conclusion is that they are
still not that good and I might not be using them as I originally thought
I would. When they work, they are nearly 98% accurate, but that is fairly
rare in practice. At the worst, they are pretty poor. Looks like the good
old human brain, tallented and trained well, will not be made obsolete by
computers. Of course, if a computer sends the CW, then the other computer
can decode it.
PSK-31, on the other hand, is a keyboard to keyboard communication
protocol and it is always very accurate. Trouble is, there are not that
many stations on the air compared to CW.
BMJ
>
>
> On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, BMJ wrote:
>
>> I worked SO-67 for the first time earlier today and had QSOs with four
>> stations I've worked before. The downlink was strong (S9+ sometimes),
>> though often garbled due to the pileup.
>>
>> Once AMSAT SA gets the bugs worked out, it's going to be a good bird.
>> That'll make five LEO FM platforms once the cross-band repeater on the
>> ISS is re-activated.
>>
>
> I've got to get back into that. Most of my spare time recently has gone
> into the CW decoding programs. My endpoint conclusion is that they are
> still not that good and I might not be using them as I originally
> thought I would. When they work, they are nearly 98% accurate, but that
> is fairly rare in practice.
Considering how the signal could be affected by static, that's not surprising.
At the worst, they are pretty poor. Looks
> like the good old human brain, tallented and trained well, will not be
> made obsolete by computers. Of course, if a computer sends the CW, then
> the other computer can decode it.
Why bother with computer CW when there's digital?
>
> PSK-31, on the other hand, is a keyboard to keyboard communication
> protocol and it is always very accurate. Trouble is, there are not that
> many stations on the air compared to CW.
Really? I thought that most of traffic on the lower ends of 20 and 40
metres were largely digital, considering the speeds of the transmissions I
hear there.
>
>
>
>
Me, again!
On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, BMJ wrote:
> Me, again! wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, BMJ wrote:
>>
>>> I worked SO-67 for the first time earlier today and had QSOs with four
>>> stations I've worked before. The downlink was strong (S9+ sometimes),
>>> though often garbled due to the pileup.
>>>
>>> Once AMSAT SA gets the bugs worked out, it's going to be a good bird.
>>> That'll make five LEO FM platforms once the cross-band repeater on the ISS
>>> is re-activated.
>>>
>>
>> I've got to get back into that. Most of my spare time recently has gone
>> into the CW decoding programs. My endpoint conclusion is that they are
>> still not that good and I might not be using them as I originally thought I
>> would. When they work, they are nearly 98% accurate, but that is fairly
>> rare in practice.
>
> Considering how the signal could be affected by static, that's not
> surprising.
There is just as much static present when PSK-31 is being received but
that mode is naturally resistant to errors. When biological brains
are sending and receiving CW, they are better than when computers are
receiving. PSK-31 does not depend as much on amplitude.
> At the worst, they are pretty poor. Looks
>> like the good old human brain, tallented and trained well, will not be made
>> obsolete by computers. Of course, if a computer sends the CW, then the
>> other computer can decode it.
>
> Why bother with computer CW when there's digital?
Because, as I said, CW signals usually outnumber digital about ten to one,
or even sometimes more.
>>
>> PSK-31, on the other hand, is a keyboard to keyboard communication protocol
>> and it is always very accurate. Trouble is, there are not that many
>> stations on the air compared to CW.
>
> Really? I thought that most of traffic on the lower ends of 20 and 40 metres
> were largely digital, considering the speeds of the transmissions I hear
> there.
Go check it out more carefully sometime. There seems to be a fraction that
are computer-based, but majority are still hand-keying, and brain-copying.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>