For the skeptical among us, this was just posted on the QRP-L net: "Message: 11 Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 20:30:29 -0800 From: "DOUG PHILLIPS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [QRP-L] Warblers To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
OK Guys, It is time to dust off those Warblers, pull them out of the dark places you have had them hidden in all summer and get them on the air. The new changes to 80m CW and SSB really don't have any bearing on the PSK slot, so get those Warblers on the air! 73 Doug W7RDP" Thanks, Bonnie, for granting us a PSK31 "watering hole" from 3580 to 3583. ;-) That is large enough to accomodate ALL PSK31 users on 80m in the whole world! In fact, if you monitored the recent European PSK63 contest, you would see that there was minimal interference, even using PSK63, which is twice as wide as PSK31. I realize that it is convention that wider modes operate from the top of a band segment downward, but that does not necessarily have to be how it is done. The object should be to accommodate as many users as possible without undue mutual interference and I hope those "kilowatts" and wide digital signals will respect those simply trying to talk to each other with "antiquated" narrowband text modes. Very few people are interested in anything more, such as sending multimedia over HF, although it is nice to see what a ham or hamshack looks like. I have a feature in DigiPan that looks up a callsign on QRZ.COM automatically, and if the ham has posted a picture on there, you can instantly see what he or his shack looks like. Broadband is quickly becoming ubiquitous, and the Internet, coupled with ham radio, makes it all possible without taking away bandwidth for simple text communications. I wrote a program called "QuickPSK" that could send a thumbnail of your face, in color, in 2 minutes using PSK63 characters. It was interesting, and fun, to do this, but never became popular, as in most cases, especially with DX stations where English is not the primary language, an exchange of callsigns, signal report, and a few other pleasantries is all that is desired. For sending larger pictures, MixW can send a raw fax picture in the same bandwidth as MFSK16, in two minutes, which is apparently a reasonable length of time to wait for a picture. Faster data rates for multimedia simply cuts down on the waiting time, but takes away bandwidth others need for simple text communicating due to the wider signal. The Pactor-II/Pactor-III comparison is applicable this case. It is a much more efficient use of bandwidth on HF to have four or five Pactor-II stations using the same space as a single Pactor-III station. To the operator, downloading email automatically, the time difference is not that significant, as on HF, Pactor-III seldom can be used at the highest speed level, but will dominate a wide space as it varies in width with speed whether or not it can utilize the whole space. What is missing from the argument that we need faster data transfer on HF is that there is a very limited amount of spectrum on HF which must be shared by many users for whom simply exchanging text is all they need to "communicate". That is why ATV is only allowed on the UHF bands - it simply consumes too much bandwidth needed by others in order to make the pictures "move" in real time. The FCC is not putting us in "technology jail", as you repeatedly infer. They are only trying to accommodate a million users on a limited amount of HF spectrum by rules that prevent a few from hogging the spectrum for their own purposes at the expense of the majority. The entire SSTV activity gets along using only one or two frequencies per band, as it is usually a group activity and, being an amateur activity and not a commercial one, can afford to wait 1-2 minutes of a picture to complete. This leaves the rest of the band for non-multimedia communications, which is as it should be with the limited amount of spectrum available on HF. 73, Skip KH6TY
