[HBR] What would W6TC do?

[Bill Cromwell]

On Sun, 2011-02-06 at 09:32 -0500, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
> Yeah, I'm still waiting for the uber-receiver built using nothing other than a LM3820 chip too :-).
> 
> Don't get me wrong, the LM3820 and Si4734 and SDR are interesting but they do not define high-performance even by the 1950's standards.
> 
> Speaking of actually *using* SDR... a Softrock SDR plus CW Skimmer in a contest is very very impressive tool.
> 
>   e.g. http://www.reversebeacon.net/genn.php?a=skimmer
> 
> Tim N3QE

Hi Tim...
...and Everybody,

That CW skimmer is at least interesting. Two things jumped right out of
that article and bit me on the *ss. 1 - The CW skimmer is really still
under development (maybe like MS Windows <g>). 2 - It's not as good at
digging CW out of the noise as a "good" CW op (whatever a good CW op
might be). Maybe it's not as good at decoding fists with accents, too.
For point two refer back to point one. Hopefully the skimmer will
improve. For that matter I think the software defined radios are still
in development but maybe further developed than the skimmer.

It's not reasonable to compare high performance machines with other high
performance machines without stating the features and goals
desired/judged. Software defined radios and skimmers are no doubt high
performance radios but *NOT* by the standard I use. I'm sometimes after
that weak signal way down there in the noise at least part of the time.
It doesn't take very much additional noise from digital sources to move
those into oblivion. The digital hash doesn't have to come close to
registering on your S meter.

I am not really a strict 'minimalist' but I do want gear that makes
lower demands on resources more than I want gear that uses more
resources. Resources include electricity for operation, parts count,
complexity, and even the amount of desktop real estate it occupies.
There are tradeoffs among all those things of course. Solid state wins
the argument every time if we only consider the watt hours or ampere
hours needed to run the equipment. But tubes still have a few advantages
over solid state in that elusive 'performance' arena - just as an
illustration. That's aside from tubes just being fun. Tube radios,
including the HBR, are still in development, too <g>. That's how we got
this thread started. I'm looking to build something based on the HBR and
I'm interested in how it can be bent and twisted to fit my own needs
without making it so radically different that it looks more like a
Kenwood or a Ten Tec or an HR10.

Over the years I have poked some fun at hams who favor all the latest,
bleeding edge toys. One of my favorite jabs regards the automated radio
that gets on the air and works stations from all over the world on
various modes and then emails us a weekly or daily report about all the
fun we're having on the air. Maybe now it would just use twitter or
facebook <eg>. Obviously none of us would really want to go quite that
far. I use some of the digital stuff too. I use computer based rtty,
amtor, packet, etc. I'm also looking into the software defined radio but
it looks like just too much cr*p and too fragile to drag out to an ice
fishing shanty for the annual "freeze your butt off" contest - etc. I
noticed a screen shot in the link to the skimmer. It displayed numerous
station IDs it had decoded more or less simultaneously. Is that a
precursor to the automated station that operates for us and then we look
at it's blog to see how much fun we're having? I can only QSO one
station at a time. Maybe a list like that would be useful for county
hunting or chasing DXCC. I can't do that with a garage full of tubes.
These last ramblings are just to highlight what 'performance' might mean
in different situations. It's fine with me if somebody mentions off
topic items sometimes. I wanna know more about that skimmer thing and
probably other items I still haven't heard of. No flames form my part of
Michigan.

But I'll always have some gear around that I can turn on when the power
utility goes offline for a while. When all the digital consumer crap for
miles around is suddenly gone it's amazing what we can hear! Thanks for
the bandwidth.

73,

Bill  KU8H