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Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 14:59:38
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
From: "Rik Strobbe" <rik.strobbe@fys.kuleuven.ac.be>
Subject: LF: various items
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Due to some days of vacation I was 'e-mail-less' for about 10 days. During
the holiday I converted the datafiles I received from the 'CFH recordig
night' of 18 december into graphs. These can be found at :

http://www.qsl.net/on7yd/t181200.htm

During lunch break I had a look at the message from the reflector in this
last period, very interesting :

- VE1ZZ has been copied all over Europe, so the fact that I could copy him
on several nights over the holidays is 'yesterdays news'.

- Comments of growing interest of QRSS in the US and BPSK in EU were made.
Regarding BPSK I'd like to comment that this is without any doubt a very
interesting mode. But my observations with any new mode is that I will only
become widespread if the 'treshold' is low enough. Remind that also QRSS
was a operated only by very few of us until appropriate software, easy to
use and to install, became available. 
Since then several new modes has been introduced (PSK, DFCW, BPSK) but none
of them has become as popular as QRSS, simply because for QRSS you just
have to install the software (running under windows), make connections to
the TX/RX and off you go ...
So far all other modes required some more or less complicated 'hardware'
changes to the transmitter, as a result the 'audience' is very small. I
believe that the only way to get over this 'hardware burden' and make these
new modes more popular is either to search for a 100% software solution
(what is almost impossible) or to provide a homebrew project that is simple
and not too expensive to make (and stay away from exotic components).
I remind that in the early days of 136kHz most of us had trouble to put a
solid signal in the air, fooling arround with all kind of PA's with mostly
just a few (tens) Watt output. Since some decent, cheap and rather
foolproof PA designs (ie those of G3YXM and G0MRF) became available almost
everybody can put several 100 Watt in the air without too much trouble.

- Certain misunderstandings about the relation between antenna efficiency,
antenna directivity, transmitter power and ERP survived the last milenium.
The attemps to make us believe that 1 Watt ERP with a big antenna is more
than 1 Watt ERP with a small antenna continue ...
It reminds me of the old question we were asked in elementary school on
april 1st : what is havier, 1kg of feathers or 1kg of lead ?

My best wishes for the new year (century .. milenium) to all of you,

73, Rik  ON7YD
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