[NLRS] Rule 1.12 discussion

[Richard Clem]

A CW by flashlight contest would be an extremely interesting activity, and I
would actually participate in it.  A few months ago, I remember a comment by a
guy on QRZ.com who carries on ragchews with passing ships using semaphore
flags!  Similarly, a heliograph contest would be extremely interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph

Having said that, these are hardly cutting-edge technologies.  More
importantly, they really have very little to do with "radio", even though they
coincidentally use electromagnetic waves identical (other than size) to radio
waves.  And even if the participants happen to be licensed amateurs and use
amateur callsigns, I don't think that these interesting activities really have
much to do with radio contesting.  (Since the semaphore code is not a
recognized digital code under Part 97, I suppose they would have to use Morse
instead!)

The current rule of coherence + electronic detection, it seems to me, keeps
the activity akin to radio.  There are occasional rare exceptions (e.g.,
Gilligan's tooth becomes a radio receiver), but in general, radio waves
require some sort of electronic device to receive.  So if light is going to be
analogous to radio, then it seems to me that the same rule ought to apply.

The coherence rule does seem to make sense, in that it does make the EM waves
akin to the radio waves that we use, in that our radio waves generally need to
have a narrow bandwidth.  

There are some interesting old articles in war-era QST's about using
non-coherent light (in other words, flashlights) for voice communications:

http://p1k.arrl.org/cgi-bin/topdf.cgi?id=21841&pub=qst

I actually did the same thing as a kid.  I modulated a flashlight by hooking
the secondary of an audio transformer in series with the lamp, and running the
primary to the output of an amplifier.  The receiver consisted of a photocell
plugged in to the mike jack of another amplifier.  I suspect that with a
larger bulb and/or the use of lenses or mirrors, I could pretty easily make
such a system pretty easily that would satisfy the 1 kM requirement.  I
suspect that with something like an automobile headlamp, one might be able to
get a few miles range out of such a system.  (In fact, with CW, even with
electronic detection, I have no doubt that you could get a range of hundreds
of miles, line of sight.)  It's getting a bit closer, but it's still not quite
radio.  It would be more analagous to modulating a very broad spectrum RF
noise source.  

I don't have an answer to the question of how to define "coherent", or whether
something else should be added to the definition.  But I think the real
question, IMHO, is whether the definition is such that it defines an activity
analogous to radio, even if the activity is not, strictly speaking, radio. 

That's just my $0.02 for a very interesting question!

73,
Rick W0IS