On 13/01/2020 20:01, John Geiger W5TD wrote:
I make FT8/FT4 QSOs every day. Very easy to set up remote operation using
the shack computer and my cellphone so I can make QSOs from work, while
walking around the neighborhood, etc. It is still exciting to work a DX
station, especially if it is a new one for the CQ DX Marathon for that
year, or a new prefix for the digital modes. Not a whole lot different
that pushing the voice recorder button to say "59 Oklahoma" several hundred
times in a SSB contest.
This neatly sums up much, as I see it, of what is devaluing ham radio
and contesting. It's the attitude that "because I'm a qualified
ham-radio operator, and a reasonable person, anything I do that includes
ham-band RF must be ham radio - especially when there's some cool
technology involved".
It seems to me that when contacts are machine-to-machine rather than
person-to-person, and cannot happen without dependence on a public
communications utility (whether cellphone or internet), they become
something other than ham-radio contacts. They are hybrid-communications
contacts, plain and simple - an ugly name for an ugly practice, but one
that, nevertheless, accurately describes the activity.
The suggestion that such contacts are "not a whole lot different from
pushing the voice recorder button . . " indicates the disregard some
hams have for reality. They may be fooling themselves, etc.
73,
Paul EI5DI
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