At one time the use of seperate Rx and Tx was ubiquitous until transceivers became common - my own first station on 70 cms back in 1964 was a lash-up of receiver, converter, transmitter, modulator and PSU, a real rat’s nest of cables! I assume nobody would object to the use of seperates today? Yet isn’t that what a web receiver is? A remote receiver controlled from your shack with in effect a very long virtual speaker lead and tuning knob spindle!
The same reasoning applies to a remote transceiver - it just has very long mike/key and speaker leads. It is only different in degree to you having your rig in another part of the house and accessing it via your laptop or tablet. Renting access is little different to having your rig via hire purchase!
So far, so good. I can accept this though personally I would only do it this way if all else fails.
As a chaser my sticking point is the use of multiple remote SDRs, the idea of chasing by hopping around them until you find one that hears the activator is a no-no to me, equivalent as I said above to fishing with dynamite. Effective but not sporting by any stretch of the imagination.
That’s a fine flight of pedantry but not helpful, as I see it if you reject the concept of sporting conduct then you also reject the concept of having a rule book.
When a repeater is involved there is one more transmitter than the number of operators involved. With a web SDR there is no additional transmitter.
Maybe you could “get with the progam” as our left-pondian cousins say?
SOTA is not inherently a competitive activity, it’s about individual aspirations and working towards a goal at your own pace. However, it can be fun to see how your progress compares with that of others, hence we publish our Honour Roll on the internet.
As you well know, Andy, I could argue semantics with relish until the cows come home and have a facility with riposts, but in this case it is moving us away from the purpose of the thread, which starts with a query about the legitimacy of using a web SDR and is centred on whether web SDRs should be allowed, in other words should the rules be changed.
I can’t hear you directly, but if you can hear me please transmit on the input to repeater XXX, which I am monitoring by echolink over the internet.
How does this differ from a WebSDR? In both cases an open-access 3rd-party receiving system is being used over the internet and no additional transmitter is involved in the QSO.
The problem Brian is there are a whole swathe of arguments and people being emotive when there is a problem with the basic definitions of what anyone is for or against. Or why there are against ‘it’. Especially as some don’t know what ‘it’ is.
As the program is not competitive by its own words, sporting does not come into it. Conflating unsporting with breaking the rules is simply wrong and you know it. I’ve heard many people say using a remote SDR is not sporting, gives someone a competitive advantage etc. but as we are not running a competition how can someone gain any advantage over another? Hell I quoted the words that are displayed when anyone looks at the database and you didn’t recognise them and thought I was playing with words. Those semantics define the award scheme as non-competitive.
SOTA is not a contest so words like ‘not sporting’ ‘advantage’ etc. do not apply.
I’m taking a contrarian view here to get people to expound why, in a non-competitive award scheme they feel a remote station is wrong. And every time I see something along the lines of “gives them an advantage” I wonder why they think they are in a contest of some kind.
I’ve postulated a solution to how you could use a remote station “without advantage” some 67 posts back. But first everyone needs to accept SOTA is not a contest between you and anyone else. Or the emotive “unfair” reasons will continue to be given.
I agree on Brian’s argument regarding the separate TX and RX.
Also, a ham might perfectly have more than one separate RX and TX and the use of one or other will come determined by the operator’s preference or convenience at a given moment.
On the same logics, a ham might have more than one antenna and the use of one or other will come determined by preference or convenience at any moment.
Thanks to internet and the new sdr technologies, a 21st century ham with internet access can choose among several different websdr RX located in different places and a ham will probably find that more than one can often let him copy a given activator. This chaser will obviously choose one websdr over the others for whatever personal reasons; so will do in case of being able to select and use different remote TX stations too.
I find this behaviour far better and honest than logging phantom QSOs, as we see doing almost daily.
When I’ve been activating, I know I’ve been chased by some hams using websdr and I thank them very much for their call and QSO. They copied me, I copied them and we had a brief, nice SOTA QSO. That’s what it counts most for me. A wider use of websdr might bring more chasers to an activator, which will produce more fun for both, the chaser and the activator.
However, as an activator, I’d very much like if a chaser having QSO with me lets me know he can’t copy me directly with his QTH antenna and is copying me with an sdr located in X Country. That would add an interesting information about the propagation conditions for the activator and also for the other chasers listening on the frequency.
After reading all the posts written so far, I’m feeling more and more pro-using websdr if someone wish to.
I have used a WebSDR but not to complete a SOTA contact.
I have used the Hack Green SDR to listen to a SOTA on a North Wales summit on 2m FM where it was not possible for either me to hear the activator direct or for him to hear me - it was used purely to place a spot on Sotawatch when the activator was struggling to get a 4th contact.
at this moment i have SDR running on my laptop, its Manly-Warringah RS in Sydney, if THEY could hear a SOTA activation in that area and i come across the SOTA stations transmission i can fire up my 400w or more if i am entitled (never owned more than 100w) and call that SOTA station from here in my shack, IF they heard me call them and i receive (through the MWRS SDR) a report and then gave them a 59+20 report thats on the SDR signal meter, that would be a legit contact?..come off it…lol…it does not help me or them, then again they would know their signal was getting to Sydney…lol… i do not even class what i am doing as SWLing because i am RXing nothing, they (MWRS) are.
I do not follow the logic of this argument. Yes, it is true that the chaser’s signal is reaching the activator direct, as you say. However, the activator’s signal is not being received at the chaser’s QTH. So the activator is working the Web SDR … not the chaser … and it is not a valid contact.
My suggestion is that the use of remote transmitters and receivers is allowed provided that they are in the same DXCC entity as the operator and the TX and RX and all aerials are within 500m of each other.
These are similar to the rules used by many contests and award schemes.
The transmitter and the receiver need to be at the same location. This is why a remote-controlled station is acceptable but an SDR (receive only) is not.
Absolutely. If there are existing standards for major awards programmes and contests, let’s adopt the same, and not worry about working all this out for ourselves.