Hi Roger!
Tnx for your point of view. I do not disagree you but... ;-) WSPR will give a
good experience of the propagation and what can be done with a given station
and thus it can be useful to increase the knowledge of all of us. It will be a
good additional feature to LF unless the "real QSO modes" are not neglected (i
know in wspr is also a qso mode). But if many people would switch to WSPR
instead of the other modes and if it gets boring after some time, because it is
rather a communication between computers, then the whole activity would
decrease, perhaps.
It is the same with contests on HF: If you want to test a new antenna then you
could do say 5 personal QSOs with a real content and discuss about your antenna
with the others and get a feedback e.g. about the QSB and so on. Or, you can do
100 QSOs in a Contest and get 599tu (yes, in wspr there are real rprts, thats
an advantage ;-) ) and can say "I worked USA, Japan, Afrika" and so on... That
is a good way to check where you can be heared but after a while, the 599tu
gets boring for the most. Recently, accidentaly i found the website of GW4ALG
who went QRT due to the contests. He made excellent circuits for amateur radio,
also for LF (my Converter was his idea). I do not know the whole story but i
can good imagine that he was very active and interested and dissapointed by the
trend to unpersonalized "QSOs" on amateur radio...
I am just a little afraid that now, many people will neglect QRSS/DFCW/CW and
go to WSPR so that the activity in the "old fashioned" modes will decrease. I
will not follow to WSPR but i am interested in the informations about the
propagation on LF, that will be accumulated. I do not say "Let the fingers from
this mode", rather "Remember that amateur radio is primary a communication
between humans, not between computers". For QRSS one can say it is the same but
for me it is rather a audible to visible conversion, the human still has to do
the work to catch a wanted signal out of a noise :-)
73 :-) Stefan
________________________________
Von: [email protected] im Auftrag von Roger Lapthorn
Gesendet: So 10.01.2010 23:42
An: [email protected]
Betreff: Re: LF: WSPR, QRSS, CW...
Dear Stefan,
You are, in the end, correct and I am sure that Mal G3KEV will already be
writing his response in support of you email, HI.
However, my own experience has been that WSPR has made possible propagation
experiments and equipment designs which, were I using CW, would not have been
possible. Six months ago I believed you needed 50-100W, capacitors rated at
hundreds of volts, antennas that resembled a military tracking station and a
ground system with miles of radials to get anywhere. Then, with WSPR, I found
out that very little was needed: a simple transverter made with a handful of
parts, an ATU made with a small ferrite rod and thin copper wire, an antenna
that is only 5m long and a ground that is, essentially, the copper pipes in my
home. With this modest station I have learned a lot about MF propagation and
had a great deal of real FUN.
So, whilst I agree that a "real" CW or phone two-way QSO is a great and
pleasurable part of ham radio, I do sincerely believe that WSPR, and indeed
many other modern digital modes like JT65, JT4 etc have their place on the ham
bands of today.
73s and a happy New Year to you.
Roger G3XBM
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