The past two weekends I've attended two "local" hamfests, one in Raleigh (RARSfest) and the other this past Saturday in Morganton (Catawba Valley Hamfest).
I thought both hamfests were well-attended, but since it was my first visit to either, I don't know if attendance was above average, normal, or down from years past. In terms of sheer size, the Raleigh hamfest was larger, which you'd expect, but not by as much as you might think. The Catawba Valley hamfest had true tailgating, in addition to two inside areas. Nice turnout. Raleigh was completely inside.
There were some vendors that attended both, which meant I had a second chance to blow even more money!
But, at both, one thing was evident. I didn't see many young hams. Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing that many younger hams at Richmond earlier in the year, and that hamfest was considerably larger than either of these two.
I don't know, maybe young folks have better things to do on a Saturday afternoon? Even young hams. Maybe I just missed them? I don't think so.
I think it's cause for concern. Anyone else noticed this?
Monday, April 21, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Boxaholics Anonymous
Hi. My name's Ed and I'm a boxaholic.
What's a boxaholic? Someone who is obsessed with boxing? Perhaps, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm a boxaholic because I save every box that something comes in, new or used. Folks, it's reached epidemic proportions. Something has to be done or I'm going to commit myself to finding some pricey help.
I'm not sure where it stems from. My parents aren't boxaholics. In fact, while some family members could have been classified as "Messy Marvins" or "Messy Marys", saving boxes hasn't been a family tradition or trait (or sickness), as far as I know. Until me.
How many of you have read online auction posts that tout "I have the original box"? I'm set, lemme tell you. With the exception of one, I have the original boxes for every single radio that I own. Stereos, DVD players, speakers (Klipsch LaScalas and Magnepans - BIG boxes), tv's, elliptical machine (technically a 'crate', I guess), you name it, I've got the box. And they all ended up downstairs in the garage and in the unfinished rooms.
Well, not anymore heh-heh. I've spent the past 3 days on a box-cutting rampage. I've reduced the tower of boxes down to a mound (ok, make that a pretty big mound) of sliced paper.
I'm saving the radio boxes. After all, who wants to buy a used radio without the original box?
Of course, I still have to take them to the dump...ugh.
What's a boxaholic? Someone who is obsessed with boxing? Perhaps, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm a boxaholic because I save every box that something comes in, new or used. Folks, it's reached epidemic proportions. Something has to be done or I'm going to commit myself to finding some pricey help.
I'm not sure where it stems from. My parents aren't boxaholics. In fact, while some family members could have been classified as "Messy Marvins" or "Messy Marys", saving boxes hasn't been a family tradition or trait (or sickness), as far as I know. Until me.
How many of you have read online auction posts that tout "I have the original box"? I'm set, lemme tell you. With the exception of one, I have the original boxes for every single radio that I own. Stereos, DVD players, speakers (Klipsch LaScalas and Magnepans - BIG boxes), tv's, elliptical machine (technically a 'crate', I guess), you name it, I've got the box. And they all ended up downstairs in the garage and in the unfinished rooms.
Well, not anymore heh-heh. I've spent the past 3 days on a box-cutting rampage. I've reduced the tower of boxes down to a mound (ok, make that a pretty big mound) of sliced paper.
I'm saving the radio boxes. After all, who wants to buy a used radio without the original box?
Of course, I still have to take them to the dump...ugh.
Monday, April 7, 2008
CW Skimmer Update
A few posts back I rambled on a little bit about CW Skimmer. At the time, several folks were sort of up in arms about whether or not this was going to forever change the course of contesting and DXing by removing the human element of copying call signs. After reading several posts on blogs and bulletin boards, I felt that CW Skimmer was a real threat to the future of contesting (and DX'ing, for that matter), and had the potential to revolutionize the hobby - good or bad.
I mentioned at the time that I intended to download it and give it a try. Here's the results of my very, very informal test session this past weekend.
First of all, setting it up is not very difficult at all. I had some trouble getting it to recognize a Yaesu FT-1000MP - actually, not CW Skimmer, but the COM control program OmniRig (it had defaulted to one stop bit instead of two). OmniRig is installed at the same time that you run CW Skimmer setup. You may already have OmniRig installed since I believe it is used on other programs as well. After verifying the expected com port settings with another program, everything fired up just fine. There are several rigs to choose from, but, again, this is a function of OmniRig, not CW Skimmer:
Nearly every Icom you can imagine is listed, Elecraft K2 and K3, most Yaesu radios, as well as Ten-Tec's are available. Kenwood only lists about 3, but there is also a generic listing for "Kenwood" that may allow other models (perhaps older?) to work too.
As I said, simply choosing FT-1000MP didn't work for me initially. I had to change the stop bits from 1 to 2, then my radio connected.
Now, here's something interesting...you don't have to actually connect to your radio for CW Skimmer to work. Many of you may already be aware of this, but it was news to me. In fact, if you're using a logging program that also controls your radio's frequency, mode, etc, you can still make use of CW Skimmer, albeit without some frequency control features - you can't click on callsigns and jump to the correct frequency, for instance.
I used a stereo dub cable that I bought at Radio Shack for about $4, with 1/8" stereo connectors on both ends to bring my audio into my laptop. Speaking of which, I'd previously read about some fairly hefty horsepower requirements for CW Skimmer. My IBM Thinkpad is around 4 years old, 1.7 GHz Pentium M, 1.25 GB RAM - no problems whatsoever. I believe most computers purchased in the last 2 or 3 years should run CW Skimmer nicely. However, I do think that horsepower comes into play, which I'll explain later. I plugged one end into the headphone jack of the Yaesu and the other end into my line-in port for the sound device on the laptop. It appears that you can also use the mic input. You may need to adjust the level, but in my case I didn't need to. This arrangement allows you to hear the transceiver's audio output through the laptop. It sounded surprisingly good.
Here's some shots of the various setup options you can choose from:
Radio Setup
Misc Setup
Audio Setup
After squaring away the rig, soundcard, and audio settings, here is how the CW Skimmer interface appears:
If you need to make further adjustments, you can use the 'View' item on the menu bar, select 'Settings', and change any parameters.
So how did it work?
Well, for those of you that have read enough and don't want to sift through the rest - I don't think people have as much to worry about as we're being led to believe. See, despite the fact that CW Skimmer is able to copy callsigns (and raw CW for that matter), it isn't perfect. Far from it, in fact.
If you look at the following picture, you'll notice that I've captured a small pileup that formed on 40 meters trying to work VP5/W5CW. The first thing that you notice is that callsigns that CW Skimmer considers to be 100% correct are displayed in bold print. The remaining callsigns are not in bold and you can also see several "guesses" that CW Skimmer has made trying to decipher them. If you'll note, the vast majority of callsigns are not considered to be 100% correct. Furthermore, I noticed that many callsigns were initially copied completely incorrect. For instance, let's say that W7ABC was sending, CW Skimmer might initially copy that callsign as EA7ABKE, which is not even valid. The second attempt might be W7ABTK - again, incorrect. From what I witnessed, it took 3 or 4, perhaps 5 attempts before it derived the correct callsigns from medium strength signals.
So why did I just say that I don't really consider CW Skimmer that much of a threat to DX'ers or contesters? Well, first of all I would call the conditions under which I tested CW Skimmer to have been about average, no static crashes, normal noise levels. If it had this much trouble correctly copying callsigns, I'm not going to place a lot of faith in it when I need it the most - in heavy duty conditions, perhaps with less than average propagation - and a bunch more stations calling.
For instance, let's say that I'm on the other end of a DXpedition and I'm trying to copy the swarm of stations calling me. Judging from how poorly it copied callsigns in the tiny pileup for the VP5 I mentioned earlier - a couple of valid callsigns out of several dozen - what good is it going to do me when the pileup is 10 times larger? Not very much. Compounding that problem is the fact that most stations would be moving around in an attempt to locate their signal near the last successful QSO. That will only make CW Skimmer's job that much harder - and less reliable if it takes 2 or 3 attempts like I witnessed. The instructions say to not tune your transceiver, but rely on CW Skimmer to tune. Not practical in some circumstances. I had to break myself of the habit of reaching for the tuning knob. When you do, either by accident or by intent, CW Skimmer has to 'realign' itself and start gathering callsigns again.
From a contesting standpoint, I can see where frequency jumps wouldn't be much of a factor, so it might have a better shot at copying callsigns. However, since I always compete as Search and Pounce, what good will it do me that a spotting net on my logging program wouldn't? If I was a big gun, I'd really need to be able to place a lot of faith in it. So let's say that I am that big gun I'm referring to. From the standpoint of an S&P station, if I don't get through in 3 or 4 calls, then I move on. It does me no good to try and try to get through in the time that I can make 2 or 3 other QSO's. So as a big gun, am I going to trust that the valid callsigns I see are still there? Am I going to call blindly? How many times will I do that before I realize how much time I'm wasting and start copying by ear again? Is it faster to look at the CW Skimmer screen, read the callsign and then type it, or hear it first and type as I'm hearing it? I don't know, seems like splitting hairs to me.
CW Skimmer seems like a very intriguing program to me. As a programmer, I wonder if having more horsepower would permit the algorithms to deduce more callsigns with greater accuracy? First glance tells me that it might allow more stations to be detected and translated, but not necessarily more accuracy. Or maybe it does become more accurate? I will need to test it on a speedy desktop machine that I have to be certain. That will be forthcoming.
So, all of this to say that I'm not convinced that everyone needs to be as concerned about this as they seem to be. Perhaps with some more tweaking and a thorough understanding of exactly how the program behaves I might be able to improve my success rate. Some might say, "Well, bonehead, you should have had a better understanding of it before you posted this." And, to an extent, they may be right. On the other hand, I know for a fact that the vast majority of hams don't study every paragraph of the instructions before they start using a piece of software. Sure, a small percentage do, but most don't. And this was one test that I conducted over about 2 hours. That's not a valid way to determine 'yea or nay'. But since I hadn't seen any other demonstrations, aside from a couple of videos on YouTube, I thought I'd at least throw this out there. And, it may appear that I'm being overly critical of CW Skimmer - I hope not, I'm trying to be objective and relate whether or not I found this program useful. Faults aside, I think it is an amazing program with a ton of potential and I intend to revisit it soon.
But, for now, there's a lot of doubt in my mind about using this as a reliable tool in a heated contest.
I mentioned at the time that I intended to download it and give it a try. Here's the results of my very, very informal test session this past weekend.
First of all, setting it up is not very difficult at all. I had some trouble getting it to recognize a Yaesu FT-1000MP - actually, not CW Skimmer, but the COM control program OmniRig (it had defaulted to one stop bit instead of two). OmniRig is installed at the same time that you run CW Skimmer setup. You may already have OmniRig installed since I believe it is used on other programs as well. After verifying the expected com port settings with another program, everything fired up just fine. There are several rigs to choose from, but, again, this is a function of OmniRig, not CW Skimmer:
Nearly every Icom you can imagine is listed, Elecraft K2 and K3, most Yaesu radios, as well as Ten-Tec's are available. Kenwood only lists about 3, but there is also a generic listing for "Kenwood" that may allow other models (perhaps older?) to work too.
As I said, simply choosing FT-1000MP didn't work for me initially. I had to change the stop bits from 1 to 2, then my radio connected.
Now, here's something interesting...you don't have to actually connect to your radio for CW Skimmer to work. Many of you may already be aware of this, but it was news to me. In fact, if you're using a logging program that also controls your radio's frequency, mode, etc, you can still make use of CW Skimmer, albeit without some frequency control features - you can't click on callsigns and jump to the correct frequency, for instance.
I used a stereo dub cable that I bought at Radio Shack for about $4, with 1/8" stereo connectors on both ends to bring my audio into my laptop. Speaking of which, I'd previously read about some fairly hefty horsepower requirements for CW Skimmer. My IBM Thinkpad is around 4 years old, 1.7 GHz Pentium M, 1.25 GB RAM - no problems whatsoever. I believe most computers purchased in the last 2 or 3 years should run CW Skimmer nicely. However, I do think that horsepower comes into play, which I'll explain later. I plugged one end into the headphone jack of the Yaesu and the other end into my line-in port for the sound device on the laptop. It appears that you can also use the mic input. You may need to adjust the level, but in my case I didn't need to. This arrangement allows you to hear the transceiver's audio output through the laptop. It sounded surprisingly good.
Here's some shots of the various setup options you can choose from:
Radio Setup
Misc Setup
Audio Setup
After squaring away the rig, soundcard, and audio settings, here is how the CW Skimmer interface appears:
If you need to make further adjustments, you can use the 'View' item on the menu bar, select 'Settings', and change any parameters.So how did it work?
Well, for those of you that have read enough and don't want to sift through the rest - I don't think people have as much to worry about as we're being led to believe. See, despite the fact that CW Skimmer is able to copy callsigns (and raw CW for that matter), it isn't perfect. Far from it, in fact.
If you look at the following picture, you'll notice that I've captured a small pileup that formed on 40 meters trying to work VP5/W5CW. The first thing that you notice is that callsigns that CW Skimmer considers to be 100% correct are displayed in bold print. The remaining callsigns are not in bold and you can also see several "guesses" that CW Skimmer has made trying to decipher them. If you'll note, the vast majority of callsigns are not considered to be 100% correct. Furthermore, I noticed that many callsigns were initially copied completely incorrect. For instance, let's say that W7ABC was sending, CW Skimmer might initially copy that callsign as EA7ABKE, which is not even valid. The second attempt might be W7ABTK - again, incorrect. From what I witnessed, it took 3 or 4, perhaps 5 attempts before it derived the correct callsigns from medium strength signals.
So why did I just say that I don't really consider CW Skimmer that much of a threat to DX'ers or contesters? Well, first of all I would call the conditions under which I tested CW Skimmer to have been about average, no static crashes, normal noise levels. If it had this much trouble correctly copying callsigns, I'm not going to place a lot of faith in it when I need it the most - in heavy duty conditions, perhaps with less than average propagation - and a bunch more stations calling.
For instance, let's say that I'm on the other end of a DXpedition and I'm trying to copy the swarm of stations calling me. Judging from how poorly it copied callsigns in the tiny pileup for the VP5 I mentioned earlier - a couple of valid callsigns out of several dozen - what good is it going to do me when the pileup is 10 times larger? Not very much. Compounding that problem is the fact that most stations would be moving around in an attempt to locate their signal near the last successful QSO. That will only make CW Skimmer's job that much harder - and less reliable if it takes 2 or 3 attempts like I witnessed. The instructions say to not tune your transceiver, but rely on CW Skimmer to tune. Not practical in some circumstances. I had to break myself of the habit of reaching for the tuning knob. When you do, either by accident or by intent, CW Skimmer has to 'realign' itself and start gathering callsigns again.
From a contesting standpoint, I can see where frequency jumps wouldn't be much of a factor, so it might have a better shot at copying callsigns. However, since I always compete as Search and Pounce, what good will it do me that a spotting net on my logging program wouldn't? If I was a big gun, I'd really need to be able to place a lot of faith in it. So let's say that I am that big gun I'm referring to. From the standpoint of an S&P station, if I don't get through in 3 or 4 calls, then I move on. It does me no good to try and try to get through in the time that I can make 2 or 3 other QSO's. So as a big gun, am I going to trust that the valid callsigns I see are still there? Am I going to call blindly? How many times will I do that before I realize how much time I'm wasting and start copying by ear again? Is it faster to look at the CW Skimmer screen, read the callsign and then type it, or hear it first and type as I'm hearing it? I don't know, seems like splitting hairs to me.
CW Skimmer seems like a very intriguing program to me. As a programmer, I wonder if having more horsepower would permit the algorithms to deduce more callsigns with greater accuracy? First glance tells me that it might allow more stations to be detected and translated, but not necessarily more accuracy. Or maybe it does become more accurate? I will need to test it on a speedy desktop machine that I have to be certain. That will be forthcoming.
So, all of this to say that I'm not convinced that everyone needs to be as concerned about this as they seem to be. Perhaps with some more tweaking and a thorough understanding of exactly how the program behaves I might be able to improve my success rate. Some might say, "Well, bonehead, you should have had a better understanding of it before you posted this." And, to an extent, they may be right. On the other hand, I know for a fact that the vast majority of hams don't study every paragraph of the instructions before they start using a piece of software. Sure, a small percentage do, but most don't. And this was one test that I conducted over about 2 hours. That's not a valid way to determine 'yea or nay'. But since I hadn't seen any other demonstrations, aside from a couple of videos on YouTube, I thought I'd at least throw this out there. And, it may appear that I'm being overly critical of CW Skimmer - I hope not, I'm trying to be objective and relate whether or not I found this program useful. Faults aside, I think it is an amazing program with a ton of potential and I intend to revisit it soon.
But, for now, there's a lot of doubt in my mind about using this as a reliable tool in a heated contest.
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