I'll venture to throw another philosophical hat into the ring here. First of all, if you really want noise-free communications, there's the Internet. Between VHF -- almost noise free for short (70 mi or so, sometimes more) haul -- and then transition to the net -- noise-free -- the means to directly talk to people is pretty much there for an enormous number of situations. In fact, it strikes me as interesting why there isn't an easily used automatic bi-directional radio-network link mechanism if the object is emergency communication. If the answer to that is along the lines of "the FCC" (I dunno, is it? There are packet-to-Internet gateways, why not something like that in fldigi?), then I say to heck with 'em, they obviously don't *want* emergency communications unless they have their snotty little mittens on them.
Secondly, for me (this is all from my POV, doesn't invalidate anyone else's, and part of the reason I'm writing this is to encourage opinions to the contrary, as well as having mine heard) a great deal of the charm is in what the atmosphere does to any particular signal. bands of noise on fax, missing chunks of rtty... yeah, rtty's a horrible performer when the s/n goes south compared to many other modes, but it's *radio*, and that's why I'm using it... because it's charming and interesting and even intriguing when the atmosphere does its happy ionospheric dance. Same reason auroras are interesting to me, pictures of clouds, etc... the randomness and its effects on my pursuits has actual charm. Thoid, WRT rx quality of any particular mode+CODEC, once we know it works as designed in good conditions, speaking again of HF-like conditions, we still know that there will be conditions in which it does not work -- because there are conditions under which zero signal reaches the receiver. So this is a problem that in the end, one really cannot fix (though again, I point at VHF and the Internet as a confluence of technologies that can serve almost any imaginable disaster that the planet can survive. With (at least) 70 mi of dependable radio link range (presuming yagis and some reasonable vantage point), ignoring satellites, you've got 140 linear miles between hard net interfaces and everything will still work... and a covered area, per net-connected station, of 30,000 sq miles. Enough to keep ya busy, I'm sure. :) I used to routinely work stations well over 200 miles out, because I'm on the plains and there are some very handy repeaters up on mountain tops I can hit at about a range of 140 miles from here. That's quality distance for VHF. OTOH, those repeaters are on top of a volcano (Zortman), so... :) I fully recognize that it is fun to work on new modes. I designed some of the SSTV modes that are out there now, and yeah, they're a heck of a lot more noise resistant and likely to make it through in poor conditions than the others - using less bandwidth, same data rate, but conveying the same information much more reliably, I might add - and that was why I coded them up. It's all manner of fun to "do it better." But I *don't* think this in any way creates a situation where lower performance modes (RTTY, 8-second BW SSTV, CW, etc.) should be considered to have lost their charm. That just strikes me as snotty. When you start talking about the channel being full, and the number of operators on it... the only time that seems to happen is during contests, the very least interesting time for me to turn the radio on under the sun. There's nothing I look forward to less in amateur radio than a contest. It means I'll be out rock collecting, or something on that order. Now, if the bands were full of hams doing this and that (other than contests)... but they aren't, and they never have been, at least since I started listening (1960 or so.) So it's back (for me) to the charm of the thing. QSOs about technical things; antennas and radios and digital whackery (like these very discussions); actually passing info about where you live to someone who lives elsewhere; beating each other over the head with superior (for the moment) weather conditions... you know, discussions with high *data* s/n, that leave one feeling stimulated and perhaps even informed. As opposed to contests, which carry no useful data at all, again from my POV. Anyway, let's not throw RTTY out with the bathwater, shall we? Bad enough the bloody news services did it. By all means, make more and better modes, experiment to see what works best (and then try something brand new) but let's just not forget the amateur nature of this, and the radio-riffic charm of everything from CW onward. A while ago, I suggested the idea that for RTTY, it'd be fun to have the received text on "paper" that had ragged edges, coffee rings, etc. That suggestion was about the charm of it all. I wouldn't mind a sound effect channel either, that performed a 5-level/shift kerchunking like an old Baudot teletype. Be an interesting adjunct to those "now, when I was a kid" stories. Just as a tube radio is still interesting, you see? Well, perhaps you don't. But for me, charm is a hugely important part of this whole thing. When the charm goes away, so will I. So there's my hat. Ugly old thing, isn't it? --Ben AA7AS
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