2010/1/10 Stefan Schäfer <[email protected]>

Dear LF,

WSPR offers new dx records for all LF stations, sure. With QRSS/DFCW it is the same, compared to CW. Perhaps some stns will successfully do TA QSOs nw in wspr, congrats!

What will happen if in 2 years the next software will be available with even much better error correction and so on? What, if this software is so good that a QSO to VK will be possible?

I mean, does such a software not relativate the value or the personal meaning of a QSO? If you reach 5000km with a almost perfect software that does record and publish everything automatically, is the QSO then done by you due to your knowledge and your motivation to built up a good station and the time you (and the QSO partner) spent to get that contact? Or is it done by the software? Is the feeling about a confirmed two way contact the same in than in CW?

If anyone can run a beacon with 10W TX power into a dipole for 40m and WSPR accumulates all contacts over time, then it is just a question of time to get a time/moment of optimal propagation on lf and so you just have to look if the ODX increased and if not, just wait some days longer...

Is that the same feeling than after a difficult but successful CW contact? Really?

If we tend to say "WSPR is 5dB better than QRSS, so why are we still doing QRSS or even CW???", then we neglect this difference that appears to some of us.

For me, personally, WSPR seems to be interesting but not really a choice since a amateur radio QSO has something to do with a signal that has to be catched out of a noise by a human, not by a computer. I want to listen (or at least watch) to a signal that is followed by a human to the same time and want to get a personal information (not such as 599tu). Anything else is just in the region of a test that gets boring if the ODX does not increase any more and fast enough. And all the work will be relativated when the next, of course better, version comes out...

In my opinion, the more we let the pc do the work, the more we are apart to the human/ each other and the faster it gets boring.

Stefan/DK7FC