HAM RADIO CONTEST LOOKS LIKE SURVIVAL STRATEGY
Will similar changes mean new life for hobby?
-from the Bellevue, Ohio Reporting Star, March 31, 1999.
Newington, CT - If all goes smoothly, a new and innovative contest will
arrive on the ham radio scene this summer when the "ARRL Technology Roundup"
makes its inaugural run, and a spokesman for the national organization of
radio amateurs is predicting heavy participation in the event while the
future of ham radio hangs in the balance.
"Contests really haven't changed since World War II, so this is the freshest
idea in amateur radio contesting to come down the line since I've been a
ham," declared Chip Henderson of the American Radio Relay League's contesting
department, himself a ham of 33 years. He speculated that dwindling ranks of
amateur radio operators in the last two decades has been due in large part to
a dearth of exciting operating events to keep hams active, as well as the
burgeoning popularity of the Internet. He said further that technologies such
as the Internet and personal wireless communications would be involved in
spawning the new ARRL competitive event. The League plans a public
announcement in the next few weeks.
Under current practice, the typical contest lasts for twenty-four hours and
requires radio amateurs to exchange specific information with each other,
sometimes several times per minute. These marathons test the technological
skills and physical and psychological endurance of the participants. The
events historically have polarized hams with "superstations" --high-powered,
computerized installations with powerful antenna systems and provocative
operating styles-- from the more modest hobbyists who pride themselves on
their ability to work efficiently from sometimes meager stations.
"A paradox that's been bothering us for a long time is our insistence on
operating all contests essentially by hand, in light of today's easy access
to computing equipment. It is an outdated, obsolete practice that doesn't
make sense in our modern world, and it probably drives away many potential
hams at a time when we badly need a boost in our numbers," Henderson said.
"Some hams use computers to log their contacts, keep time, and things like
that, but listening, copying, tuning and typing all still require a human
to be present, making low-level decisions. Computers are much faster and
more efficient than humans at making those decisions. We wanted to bring
contesting into the digital age and allow the operator to make higher level
decisions about his or her operation."
In the fledgling Technology Roundup, hams would be freed from much of the
arduous and sometimes dreary busywork of being physically present for each
contact. Using computers and specially written software, they would program
their stations to listen for other entrants on the air and the computers
would automatically exchange the required information with the stations
heard. Their computer-controlled transceivers would be connected to the
Internet, and software running on their computers would report in nearly
real time the progress of the station, including call signs and signal
reports heard, to a central computer at ARRL headquarters in Newington,
Connecticut. With the software in control, hams would be free to enjoy other
activities during the weekend, arriving alert and refreshed to work on the
Monday morning after the contest.
Hardly able to contain his excitement, Henderson continued, "This is great
because it rewards brain power, savvy, and cleverness, rather than who can
stay awake the longest or send the most information with the highest power.
It's a test of who has the best algorithm or way of deciding what to do next
in a contest. It pits mind against mind in a sheer showdown of thinking.
That's what a contest should be."
"[Our ham club] had a trial run last weekend," he continued, "and, let me
tell you, the results were dramatic. I 'worked' nearly fifty stations in
less than four minutes, with no prior knowledge of where to look for them."
He went on, "I sat and watched with awe as my computer automatically and
expertly located other members of the group and logged the information,
taking less than five seconds per contact." Henderson said that, after the
weekend-long test of the system, he didn't have the "frazzled, burned-out"
feeling he normally has after several hours of contesting. "At one point,
I went inside for a minute to pour myself a cup of coffee, and when I came
back out to the shack, I discovered I had already worked fourteen more
stations," he said.
Domingo Siete, assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine
and co-inventor of the software, says that the key to the program's
capability lies in a mathematical operation known as the Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT). "The FFT allows us to listen to the entire radio spectrum
at once, and identify what signals are there. It's a bit like having
hundreds of thousands of radios each tuned to a different frequency and
being able to pick out a particular one that has a signal of interest. Once
that is done, the actual exchange of information is trivial," said Siete.
According to him, recent improvements in the speed of analog-to-digital
converters now allow the average user's computer to perform complex FFTs
that were not previously possible. The faster the computer, the less time
is taken to calculate the equations to find signals that are sometimes
fading rapidly or buried in noise.
"We feel this new contest, and the software to run it, are part of amateur
radio's answer to the awful lot of criticism leveled against it by hams and
non-hams lately. We need to address the claims that ham radio hasn't kept
in step with the information explosion, and to find ways to attract bright,
young people into the hobby," he said. Columbian-born Siete, a casual
contester himself, claims that fully computer automated stations are
inevitable. "We're working on a product right now that will allow the
average ham of modest means to come home from a busy day at work and see
what DX [distant stations] his or her station has worked while they were
at the office or out with clients. Electronic QSL [confirmation] cards will
be sent and received and awards will be issued by the cognizant body
without any intervention whatsoever by the operator. It's a beautiful and
logical marriage of ham radio with Internet technology," he said.
Technologists who course the direction of ham radio with their research,
construction articles and projects predict the future will see more
integration of consumer devices such as pagers, wireless phones and
palmtop computers, with radio. For the last several years national ham
radio magazines have reported an increase in advertisements for
consumer-like ham radio gadgets and equipment, such as personal
televisions, hand-held measuring equipment, and radios that look
strikingly similar to stereo equipment. Gone are the days when hams
hunched over glowing shortwave sets in a darkened corner of their garage,
pounding telegraph keys and listening for signals from faraway places.
The modern ham is well equipped with modern electronics, digital
communications and flashy indicators on his radios.
Ham radio contesting by computerized robots has radio's enforcers at the
Federal Communications Commission divided over the new direction it could
herald for the 75-year-old amateur radio service. Many of those charged
with legislating ham radio, including Paula Chang, say automated computer
stations are sorely needed to bolster a dying service and will provide a
means of more closely monitoring radio activity. Chang, a deputy
commissioner of the FCC's Wireless Bureau, is enthusiastic about bringing
state-of-the-art technology into the realm of the experimenter and
hobbyist. "For years the people at the top have grappled with the prospect
of a stagnant avocation. What they have needed, but have been unable to do,
is to infuse amateur radio with exciting new technology at a level above
the consumer but below the really esoteric plane of research and
development. This could be the 'sweet spot' they have been looking for,"
she said. But a Reagan-era veteran of the same FCC office who asked that
his name be withheld sounded a much darker tone. "The spirit of
communications is being violated by this trend toward human-less stations.
But what really concerns me is that this proposal under consideration has
not even been seen by the majority of amateurs. When they get wind of what
the ARRL is going to do, there will be a mutiny of the membership. Why are
they being so secretive about it? I believe it's because they don't want
an endless debate like they got with the Morse code thing. They just want
to say, 'Here, this is the way it is.'" He was referring to the 1998
license restructuring plan that changed the classifications of ham
licenses and gave more privileges for less Morse code proficiency,
causing a deep rift within the amateur ranks to come to the surface.
Neither do all hams see these new developments as beneficial. William D.
Terrell, 48, a Savannah, Georgia ham who has spent the last twenty years
putting together a station tuned for contesting, believes the trend begun
by this new definition of contesting will ultimately be harmful to the
hobby. "Traditional contesting keeps me sharp and forces me to make
split-second decisions," he said at a meeting of the International
Contest Union held in Coral Gables, Florida. "It goes back to the roots
of radio and besides that, it really is a bonding element with my buddies
all over the world. I've got a lot of hardware here that few people in
the world know how to use, which, I don't know, becomes an intimate part
of me in the heat of a contest. I like playing with technology and
tinkering. If I can't be part of my own station during a contest, it
just ain't fun anymore." Dale McMinty, 22, a Rolling Meadows, Illinois
retail clerk and newly-licensed ham, commented on the scarcity of younger
hams in the hobby. "I guess in one way, yeah, programming computers for
contesting will bring in a lot of the younger people who are doing their
computer thing right now without forcing them to get too much into the
radio aspect of it. For me, I know I would rather talk to the other
station myself, instead of having my computer do it for me. I guess it's
just a matter of what you want to do."
With licensed operators, their leadership, and the regulatory bodies at
odds over the proposal, the long term implications for ham radio remain
cloudy. Automated contesting in some form appears to be the shape of
things to come. Whether it will help or hurt amateur radio in the end is
a question that will undoubtedly be answered on the air, perhaps in
furious bursts of activity known as contests and with computers trading
information with other computers in a ham battle of the robots, 21st
century style.
(The preliminary date for the maiden meeting of the Technology Roundup
has been set for July 24-25, 1999.)
--
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