[Meteor-Scatter] Perseids and operating procedures!

[paul]

In message <008d01c24448$78664ea0$536c1a50@mshome.net>, Gabriel - EA6VQ 
<ea6vq@vhfdx.net> writes
>> Maybe we should consider to use beacon band during the big MS showers (
>> 4 times a year without beacons would not harm me ..HI)
>
>I don't agree...

Neither do I....

>
>The SSB portion of the band is large enough to handle either voice and 
>narrow band digital communications.

It certainly should be *if* we can co-ordinate the activities.

>Take into account that
>because of FSK441 and MS nature QSOs every 400 Hz are possible (that's 
>much narrower than SSB !!), so just calculate how many
>simultaneous QSOs can be run in the 144.360 - 144.380 Mhz segment (for 
>instance)

This is true, however there will need to be significant more effort put 
into the "set up" of stations for it to be truly successful.

During the Perseid period I spent a little time listening to the quality 
of the wsjt and hscw (I did find one or two) transmissions and noted the 
following..

Timing, WSJT very poor UTC correlation. Only 30s period and some +/-10 
second errors observed, resulting in complete chaos on 370. There are 
numerous utilities available to set the pc clock via the Internet, MSF 
etc clocks are cheap and Teletext time sources are available. There 
isn't really an excuse for incorrect timing. I have seen the PC clock 
slip and stutter when running DXtelnet in another window so keep an eye 
on the timing, don't assume it's always good.

Bandwidth, it can be easy to make a pc sound card modulate an SSB tx, 
but using the mic input and not paying attention to rf decoupling and AF 
level setting meant that many stations were using excessive bandwidth. 
The same stations would make every effort to ensure that their SSB 
signals were clean by asking another station to check their 
transmissions  but didn't seem to have bothered to check their TX when 
using data modes. The worst offender was occupying some 50Khz either 
side of 370.

If we are going to make good use of the available spectrum, timing and 
clean signals are paramount.. just like any other mode.


Then there is the DXCluster, hmmm... we don't need to use any of the 
sked frequency, much easier to send 3 spots, one saying CQ, the next 
saying R26 and the next saying thanks I got your RRR now!


All IMHO of course..

Regards

-- 
Paul GW8IZR IO73TI
http://www.gw8izr.com