On 5/1/2023 8:31 PM, Black Michael via wsjt-devel wrote:
Nobody owns the definition of split
Mike,
For as long as I've been a ham (68 years) "split" operation has meant
transmitting on a frequency DIFFERENT from the station you're working.
The most common application is for a DX station in a rare location, when
he tells callers to call higher in frequency. I suspect that this was
common practice years before my time.
I'm only guessing, but several decisions made by the developers of WSJT
modes had little if any experience on the HF bands. One decision was to
use the word "split" to describe something entirely different from what
it had meant since at least since at least the early 1950s. Another bad
decision was the choice of FT4 operating frequency on 40M. Another was
to allow far more empty space between watering holes for what has become
nearly a dozen on the HF bands. If a WSJT-X channel is 2.8 kHz, 3 kHz
spacing makes far more sense than ten!
My training is electrical engineering, and except for having learned to
use computers and software operationally, I live in the analog world. I
wouldn't dream of diving into digital and software and start defining
things or establishing practices for that world -- I'd learn what those
practices were and follow them!
as for confusing hams they are
only confused because they refuse to learn.
Hams are confused with "split" in WSJT-X 1) because it's NOT "split" as
defined within ham radio since the early '50s; and 2) because they don't
understand how SSB is used to transmit and receive digital modes.
If anyone had asked me what to call the practice of shifting the TX
frequency and audio frequency in opposite directions to minimize audio
distortion I would have suggested the word "shift" or "TX shift,"
because that's what WSJT-X is doing. "Shift" is the wrong word!
And when we follow the good operating practice of never calling another
FT8 or FT4 on their own frequency, we ARE working split!
BTW -- they guys who developed hardware and software for SDRs did
something equally uniformed, using the word "diversity" to describe
something that wasn't diversity - diversity reception was first used in
the earliest days of radio (at least the 1920s) to deal with selective
fading).
73, Jim K9YC
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