Are you sure about that?
Are you sure about that?
Not now, no!
Itâs what I was initially told, and indeed what it says on the instructions on the link near the top of the thread.
However, thinking about it, it must surely respond to all CQ calls, checking them against the alerts, as the RBN itself doesnât record âCQ SOTAâ.
Back to the drawing board. I suppose the only way would be another command in the comments field of an alert that RBNgate would see and understand to spot 100kHz higher in SSB mode.
2 Likes
Some good ideas from Tom here.
As I now understand it, the skimmers only respond to a âCQ AA1ZZâ type of call, and record the calling frequency. Itâs then the job of RBNGate to try to ascertain whether AA1ZZ has registered an alert in the SOTA system, and within some relevant timeframe. If RBNGate finds the call in the SOTA system, it issues some kind of report which others can then read, and know that AA1ZZ is now on air. It seems to me to be irrelevant that RBNGate knows (it is, after all, a system built exclusively for CW activists) that AA1ZZ will not only call in CW, but continue in that mode.
Imagine for a moment that AA1ZZ wishes to continue, not in CW, but in SSB, or whatever mode he has posted in his SOTA alert: RBNGate can read the SOTA alert details and construct another kind of notice, where both the frequency and the mode are taken not from the skimmer-recorded frequency, but from the list of frequencies and modes listed in the alert notes. One could even imagine the notes field available to SOTA-ists being lengthened, or a new field or fields being introduced to allow more flexibility to the alerter, as well as to the RBNGate system.
At least in this way, the operator who cannot, or does not wish to, operate in CW has a chance for chasers to know he/she is on air. Even if heâs not on the RBNGate-posted frequency (QRM/QRN), he can be found more easily +/- and then spotted in the regular way. The SSB activists have it hard in a couple of ways:
- their power output often has to be higher than the CW activists (increased draw on battery),
- unlike the CW activists, they have no dedicated automated system to help them being heard/spotted.
Just ideas to ponder; I really canât imagine anything would actually be changedâŚ
The problem I see here Rob is that many alerts contain intentions to use several modes. In that case, how would RBNgate know which one to spot as?
Actually the reverse problem exists in my idea. If I alert as 7-cw, 7-ssb, then if I call CQ SOTA on 7.018MHz CW, how will the potentially enhanced-RBN know whether to then spot me on 7.018MHz CW or 7.118MHz SSB?
Then again, I guess that the only people that really need this functionality are the non-CW phone-only activators, and so if a certain code was typed into the alert comments field, then RBNgate would place all spots +100kHz and in SSB.
I really canât imagine anything would actually be changedâŚ
Not sure why you would say that Rob, given that weâre exploring the discussion with you. Ultimately, it would be down to KU6J as to (a) whether it is feasible and (b) whether he has the spare time and effort available to develop it.
Rob, weâre not talking about your particular auditory processing disorder with learning CW, which I accept makes it much more difficult than the average person. Impossible probably. Weâre talking about replicating what RBNgate does to spot people. Itâs (and I hate the marketing buzzword) leveraging a host of resources for free that other people are providing. That was what my comment to Ed was about. Iâm stuck in between a rock and a hard place when I want to comment about Colin for the reasons you mention.
To replicate RBN you would need
- a speech decode system that can copes with all the distortions in analog speech
- a speech decoder that can cope with all the accents and pronunciations of English words by non-English speakers
- a speech decoder that can decode foreign languages to text (I commonly hear Spanish, French, German and Russian but in Australia it would need to cope with all the Pacific Rim languages for instance.)
Once you have that running you then need to persuade
- hundreds of people to run your speech skimmer (and it will need higher performing hardware than a CW skimmer)
- run an aggregating service to collect that data and make it available to people the way RBN does
- run an alerts skimmer the same as RBNgate
The second list is much more achievable, people run CW skimmers and back end services cost a few dollars a month in reality. If people see an advantage to running a voice skimmer then they will run them just the way people run CW skimmers.
The first list is the hard bit. Voice recognition is pretty damn cool and functional on my Android phone. But the quad core A7 doesnât do the heavy lifting of recognition, the audio is streamed to Googleâs hundredâs of thousands of servers. And it doesnât work a damn if you are in a noisy environment. So it works in a nice quiet place like the office here or at home and doesnât work when you try to show someone in a cafe or a bar. And we need to be able to scan 100s of kHz of space and pick out the voice signals, remove a phase and frequency error, extract the phonemes, recognise them from all accents/languages and convert to text. Itâs an impossible task with todayâs hardware.
So itâs a perfectly valid comment to express that compared to trying to solve the speech recognition issues it would be easier to learn some morse. For the overwhelming majority of people that would be true. Most people donât have a cognitive disorder like APD like you. Iâm sure that there will be plenty of amateurs who have varying degrees of APD ranging from mild to severe. What are the figures for all forms of APD amongst the population as a whole, less than 5%? And amongst amateurs? If you wish to take a comment back to Ed as a dig at you then fine.
You canât learn Morse no matter how hard you try. I canât eat sugar no matter how much exercise I do. Lifeâs a bitch for both of us. You may get frustrated that people assume your cognitive disability is indicate of laziness or lesser intelligence. I get frustrated that I can lose my sight no matter how good my sugar control is. Frustration wont help either of us short term or long term.
If you want to contrive a system that takes data that the skimmers have fed into RBN, scrape the alerts page (or use the API when itâs published) and then use those as hints there is a voice activation then you can do that now. You will have to resolve the issue that someone may alert theyâll do CW and SSB and figure out if the CW data from RBN is them callng CQ on CW for CW or calling CQ on CW for SSB and what frequency they will be using for SSB. It can be done but the problems people have with CW spots for CW activations suggests itâs a Pandoraâs Box of fun and games. The kind of gift that will keep giving for a long time. And, you may find that supporting people calling CQ in the CW bands with this kind of system when they donât want a CW QSO leads to friction with the CW fraternity who hear a CQ and find another SOTA station wasting their time by wanting an SSB QSO.
There are better ways of doing this than using RBN. RBN happens to work very well partly due to the numbers of skimmers, partly due to how well CW works in general, but mainly due to how well VE3NEAâs skimmer software works. Until you have compared that software to run of the mill CW decoders you wont understand just how much better that software is. And that is THE fundamental component to RBN.
Hereâs 5secs of real data from RBN to see what is provided:
Welcome to RBNâs bulk spots telnet server.
DX de DK0TE-#: 14007.2 SM0SKB CW 05 dB 23 WPM CQ 1209Z
DX de S52X-#: 14007.30 SM0SKB CW 20 dB 23 WPM CQ 1209Z
DX de SE0X-#: 14023.1 SV8/OK1FFU CW 15 dB 27 WPM CQ 1210Z
DX de DF4UE-#: 14070.4 UT7MT/QRP PSK31 28 dB 31 BPS CQ 1210Z
DX de DF4UE-#: 7037.0 OE6RDD CW 25 dB 29 WPM CQ 1210Z
DX de DF4UE-#: 14023.0 SV8/OK1FFU CW 19 dB 27 WPM CQ 1210Z
DX de DF7GB-#: 7037.0 OE6RDD CW 29 dB 29 WPM CQ 1210Z
You could use CW messages to alert. But youâd be better get a group of people to run CW skimmer and not send the data to RBN but send the raw outputs for processing to your system rather than antagonising another group. Then instead of using âCQ de MM0FMFâ they could send âSSB 14.225 de MM0FMFâ.
I have benefited from RBNGate, which is a clever idea well implemented. An equivalent system for SSB - and other modes would be useful too, and clearly an interesting technical challenge.
Leaving technology aside, though, I canât help thinking that as automated spotting systems develop, and activators are also increasingly able to self spot, fewer human chasers will be paying attention to the Alerts.
Perhaps, instead of (or as well as) including machine readable data in the Alert, we could include, say, âHPâ in the alert, for High Probability. Used when you foresee difficulties raising contacts, but can be confident of being on air at the specified time. In the comments, you could specify F +/- 10K or whatever.
Human chasers could register that, and make a point of listening outâŚ
Adrian
G4AZS
Andy, Iâm not suggesting anybody build a speech-based RBN - itâs just too fraught with difficulties. And, itâs nice to know that Alex VE3NEAâs CW skimmer is top of the class, which is why itâs used - but the fact is irrelevant. No offence to Alex, I use his DXAtlas all the time, but we can note that SOME kind of decent CW decoding software is being used and then move on. I note also from the RBN data (fourth line) that PSK31 is also being decoded.
Well, there are a number of good ideas and suggestions being put forward, so this really has turned into a discussion. I still doubt that anything would change, since there would be too many things to change - even if anybody wanted it.
Here on the SE corner of VK for SSB activations, we tend to congregate around 7090 +/-10KHz unless another frequency has been alerted - on weekends you can be pretty confident of having a chaser hear and then spot you. However on weekdays, it is nearly essential to have alerted prior to an activation - and if you are within a reasonable time and frequency from your alert, you will still usually get an obliging chaser to assist in spotting.
Thinking outside the box, with the increase in people using small tablets and or smartphones, maybe it would be feasible to connect these to the radio and use a data mode to get the spot out. Not being familiar with things digital I couldnât say for sure, but I would think it is possible with a bit of lateral thinking and most likely a lot easier than to rejig the CW skimmers for non CW input.
Matt
VK1MA
Yep, thatâs along the lines I was thinking along in one of my earlier posts in this thread. Keep those ideas coming! - unless of course there are too few SSB-only SOTA activists out there to warrant any further discussion. And I hasten to add Iâve not yet made one single HF SOTA activation, so my questions are all âwhat if?â.
But get the spot out to what Matt?
Lots of interesting discussion.
Just to pick up a few points about RBN.
AFAIK, CW skimmer decodes CW, (including Beacons) and digital modes.
It passes these to a RBN Telnet server, which de-dupes, checks validity etc of the calls received.
If the validated callsigns are preceded by TEST or CQ (special config is required for beacons) it passes them to either the RBN web server or alternatively to a cluster server (both configurable in the local node).
CW Skimmers typically cover 96khz of bandwidth (will depend on your soundcard spec), the centre frequency is set in a config file, which is normally placed in the centre of the CW section.
My suggestion , instead of trying to âfudgeâ a workaround to the existing CW skimming network, is to create a completely new CW skimmer network centred in the SSB band portion.
Whilst no one in their right mind would do this normally , it could provide the benefit that SSB ops are looking for.
If there was enough interest amongst the SOTA community, you would only need a handful of skimmers to provide coverage across the popular SOTA bands. These Skimmers would not talk to RBN, but instead an alternative SOTA Telnet server. This can then be used to connect into either a dedicated cluster node, SOTAwatch or whatever else takes your fancy.
The cost of running a skimmer is miniscule; Iâm sure many already have the hardware sitting in their shacks to do this already. A Telnet server would be required. It could be funded by voluntary donations.
The mode of operating/spotting would be exactly the same as for cw ops. Send a pre recorded (so you donât need to be a cw OP) CQ CQ de M1CALL M1CALL on the SSB frequency you are active on.
A SOTA CW Skimmer (configured for that band) picks up and decodes the Callsign, forwards it to the Cluster server (NOT RBN), and the rest of the magic is more or less already in place. You get a valid callsign on a genuine frequency, coming from a unique SOTA skimmer (so you know itâs an SSB spot , not a CW one). Youâd enhance the spot by doing a similar lookup to KU6J (checking valid alert, existing spot etc), and forward to SOTAwatch.
The telnet server would, for the most part, be doing next to nothing 99.99% of the time (cw in the ssb portion of the band is pretty sparse) so could be specd accordingly. Itâs not going to get hammered with thousands of spots an hour (like it would if the skimmer was sitting in the cw section).
It just needs someone who can configure an aggregation server, a handful of ops willing to provide dedicated skimmers in the ssb sector, a small amount of funding, some technical know how and Robert is your Mumâs brother.
It sounds exactly like the sort of thing radio amateurs should be good at addressing : 
smile:
Just an idea, Iâm more than happy with RBN as my spotter 
Hi Andy, digital not being my forte, the answer is âdunnoâ as I am not aware of any existing systems that could be used for this.
However, I imagine that it could be done something along the lines of using PSK or maybe packet to send a message with the pertinent information (potentially the same format as the SMS traffic) to a radio at home which then automatically uploads to the spot site.
Would take someone with a little more knowledge of things digital and computers to make it happen, but seems to be similar to the RBN gate style of operations. With a little thought, it could be far more flexible given the ability to send messages which could mean alerts could be added on the run or comments included in the spot indicating planned intentions (i.e. bad weather, short activation only).
I think it would need a centralised server to prevent duplicate messages in the event that multiple stations receive and attempt to submit a spot, but these are the sort of details that would need to be considered before such a system was put in place. Personally I am more than happy to put up an antenna and a dedicated radio for this at least most of the time, just need someone else with the experience to do the groundwork first!
Potentially we could even look at the reverse of this - having a system to send this sort of information out so that when operators are out of phone coverage they can see a textual version of the spots. Hmmm, this is sounding like a modification of the old HF packet link systems could be suited to this concept?
Matt
VK1MA
Hi Matt,
What about using APRS?
Ed,
Hi Ed, APRS is effectively packet isnât it? Certainly one of the options that would be available and with the existing APRS network, no need to build our own. May be as simple as needing a script to pick up from the APRS site any SOTA specific transmissions. Actually I just saw a reference to it being able to send text messages - including acknowledging receipt from a destination station. Given there are already APRS gateway servers, maybe they could be used to forward the message to the SOTA watch spot page?
Here in VK1 we have excellent coverage courtesy of the digipeater on Mt Ginini, so a simple 2m HT would suffice. I believe there are also HF APRS freqs, so that could also be an option for those areas without VHF coverage.
Matt
VK1MA
So if I want to activate on SSB, you are suggesting that I become marginally proficient in CW, then pack a key, fit a narrow filter to the rig, call CQ in the CW section, raise a contact, and get that contact to spot a QSY. Andy, this would probably work, but it sounds terribly laborious to me.
All this discussion is about getting spots for phone activators, well, much as I admire the ingenuity of some of the suggestions (and if I wanted to play the ingenuity game I would suggest using the sub-audible tones used to access repeaters!) I think that it is a human engineering problem.
Look at it like this:
You have alerted for an activation. You call CQ hoping that somebody hears you. You get no answer. Either nobody is listening on your frequency, or they cannot hear you. Obviously if they cannot hear you then a spot wonât make much difference. The problem then is getting people to listen on your frequency. Now many if not most of us have become lazy, we watch the screen waiting for a spot to galvanise us into action, rather than monitor at least the more popular watering holes for ourselves, so the problem is how do we get more chasers to actively search for activations rather than wait for Spots to drop activations in their figurative laps? This is where we could harness the competitive spirit. We could have an annual league table similar to the points tables but counting first spots where the callsign of the spotter is different to the callsign of the activator. The competitive spirit kicks in and people start searching for opportunities to Spot.
Simples!
Well right, it probably wonât happen, I can just see my fellow members of the MT wincing at the thought of more tables and another programming problem, but it directs us to where the real problem is. The marvellous facilities provided for SOTA are stultifying the search and identify skills that are part of the armoury of the skilled operator. Perhaps we ought to switch Spots off occasionally in the probably vain hope that people will develop their listening skills - just kidding (I thinkâŚ)
Brian
Andy beat me to it APRS2SOTA already exists. APRS Automatic packet reporting System, often used not only to track people/balloons but also to pass data in EMComms. I think most APRS receive stations are VHF (2m) but I think there are some on HF. This of course is not a skimmer, as was being sought earlier in this thread but is an RF based way of spotting oneself on SOTAWatch when there is no cell phone coverage.
Ed.
Andy/Ed, well I think that there is no need to reinvent the wheel then - from the looks of things, APRS to SOTA does pretty much what we need. Yes a purely SSB skimmer would be nice, but the technical challenges make it pretty unlikely. It has been an interesting discussion and is making me think about playing with APRS for my own spots on those summits that I have no phone coverage.
Matt
VK1MA
Well no, thereâs no APRS network in Scotland where the mountains are.