[Elecraft] [KX3] FT8: "Magic radio"?

[Grant Youngman]

I think so.  

I still have a beating heart for my first “personal computer”.  For it’s time  (late 50’s to early 60’s) it was a very smart and very fast, fully asynchronous, about 1 Mhz, machine with around 1000+ vacuum tubes, and one of the earliest machines (if not THE earliest) with dynamic memory allocation.  I’m sure the Apple watch could easily outdo it now, just to display the time.

I’d bet there will at some point be a version of the  “Teensy” that will be more than capable of running a contest without operator intervention, maybe with a link to Watson .. or not.

There certainly ought to be a separate category.  At least for the few of us old and getting older curmudgeons left that still use pen and paper logging and a sideswiper key (or heaven forbid — AM).  And that actually use the knobs on our radios to tune … :-) :-)

One of these days I’m  going to get my Digital Group Z-80 out  of the box, replace the one missing chip on the CPU board, and threaten everyone :-)
 
Grant NQ5T
K3 #2091, KX3 #8342
SKCC #18434

> On Jul 3, 2018, at 3:36 PM, Wayne Burdick n6kr at elecraft.com [KX3] <KX3-noreply at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> Overheard yesterday on 40 meter SSB, in reference to FT8: “Given the level of automation and whatnot, maybe they should call it ‘magic radio’ instead of ‘ham radio’.”
> 
> New contest category?
> 
>