Using remote receiving to chase / noise problems

On the Bands
24

The thing is, Martyn, there are complex issues here which the MT have been discussing for some time. Here are a few of them:

Is the use of a remote receiver/multiple remote receivers ethical? How about remote transceivers, is the use of one ethical? Is the use of one not owned by the user ethical? Is the use of multiple remote transceivers ethical?

We are nearing the point where from your location you can chase activations from remotes almost anywhere in the world, selecting the remote that gives you the best signal. Is this like shooting ducks in a puddle? Does it solve a difficult local situation for a chaser or does it make chasing pointless because of the lack of challenge? Where remotes are rented, does it amount to buying your chaser results?

If use of a remote receiver or remote transceiver is judged unethical, how would a rule banning it be policed?

In the case of Andyā€™s answer, this represents majority thinking on the MT, but this is a developing situation and who knows where it will have moved to by the time we are ready to issue a revised version of the GR?

25

Of course I see that this is a complex issue, which is why I was surprised to see such a terse statement and wanted to know whether it was actually intended as a policy statement or just an expression of opinion.

FWIW, my personal view is that use of a remote receiver that you own and have configured for your personal use should be permitted, but that the use of a general publicly available service (whether paid for or not) should be forbidden. There may be a bit of a grey area, but it does seem to me that there is a big difference between setting up your own ā€œvery long headphone leadā€ and just using a public SDR.

You also need to consider remote transmitters, of course. Again I would apply the same principle. If it is all mine, operating under my own licence and fulfilling all of the technical requirements of that licence, I would say permit it; it is after all a significant technical challenge. If it is something that somebody else is operating as a service, I would say not.

I think the only viable alternative is to ban remote equipment, though you would have to be a little careful about defining ā€œremoteā€ clearly.

The idea that you can choose just one remote location and that you would then be unable to use your local receiver seems very odd to me. For a start, you almost certainly do have a local receiver and you canā€™t really unhear anything that it happens to pick up. You would also be excluding the possibilty of counting summit-to-summit contacts as chases without making ever more complicated exceptions to the rule. If it gets too complicated itā€™s probably wrong.

Martyn

26

I was tempted to use the word ethical, as you rightly point out Brian its the core political issue with remote operating.

Remote receivers are abundant and are easily accessible by almost anyone. I am convinced that chasers have used them against me in the past. Impossible to police. I think they should be used in accordance with whats possible with propagation and sensible power.

Remote stations open to public use that have full T/R capability are not so easily accessed without some form of agreement being reached between the owner and the user(s). I donā€™t agree with this being allowed at all rgr SOTA. My own opinion.

Remote private full T/R stations for a single user are allowed in contesting I believe, If used by one chaser and controlled / maintained by such, I donā€™t see a problem with this either.

VHF should be taken into consideration differently for obvious reasons.

They are my views anyway.

Jonathan

27

Oh, Iā€™m not quitting yet, Mate, I still have some way to go experimenting with antennas, and if all else fails I can abandon my affection for talking over the air and buy a narrow filter and a morse key (but that would be close to quitting in my mind!)

Itā€™s Brian, by the way. Iā€™ve been plagued by that anagram all my life!:rage::grinning:

28

Sorry, must concentrate :flushed:

Could almost claim that as a typo ;)[quote=ā€œG8ADD, post:27, topic:15190ā€]
Oh, Iā€™m not quitting yet, Mate, I still have some way to go experimenting with antennas
[/quote]

Good, cos I donā€™t associate quitting with your generation ! :slight_smile:

29

Are you trying to make me feel OLD, just because my ham licence can be carbon dated? Come to think of it, my climbing club is having its 60th anniversary bash in July and I have a sinking feeling that I will be one of the oldest ones there, if not the oldest, that can still slowly plod up a hillā€¦

30

Haha, your only as old as you feel !:smile:

31

With a streaming cold? Time to order some plywood!

32

Some more reading suggests that the RSGB has a protocol for resolving VDSL interference with Openreach which supply and maintain the UK telephony network as a sub-division of BT, if I have worded that correctly !

https://www.thersgb.org/forums/index.php?threads/severe-vdsl-interference-and-bts-response.267/

Apprently contacting John Rogers M0JAV is the first step to this process.

I will keep updating this thread with progress. I will conduct more spectral measurements as time allows. If this helps others its worth my time writing it up here.

Jonathan

33

Nigh on essential here Brian. VDSL, solar panels, plasma screens - you name it, they are all around my location. I have to resort to a 300Hz bandwidth for most of my chasing. It has got so bad that I have started to do some work on seeing if I can find a secure yet accessible remote location for the entire station. I have been known to go out portable to chase a specific summit, but that smacks of desperation!

34

My position on this is that SOTA is not a contest (or so I believe is itā€™s aim). It is inclusive, not exclusive.

On these two points, if a chaser ā€œgets an advantageā€ or ā€œis only able to chaseā€ by using a remote radio - why are some suggesting this is unacceptable.

If this was a HF contest where someone ā€œwinsā€, then the use of ā€œassistanceā€ is either allowed (in a separate class) or not allowed but again I say SOTA is not a contest and I for one donā€™t want to see it become one.

Hence my position on this is that the use of a remote stations should be a matter of personal choice.

As many amateurs become older and may have to move into hospitals or care homes where no radio equipment is allowed, I see the use of a remote station via the Internet to be a godsend for those people. Whether they own or rent time on it, or itā€™s a station provided by the local club to members for free is irrelevant.

73 Ed.

1 Like
35

To use contesting as a comparative Ed was used purely to refer to a set of rules set out to level a playing field. There is nothing competitive about SOTA other than score running which can continue to infinity, nothing is gained other then position in a table. Most sensible individuals understand that principle.

Yep, if it can get someone on air who is keen and is otherwise incapable of operating from a domestic dwelling in the traditional sense then great.

36

I understand what you and Ed are saying, but for me a remote station is something that I find instinctively distasteful, alien to everything that I love about radio. In fact, Jonathon, to me it is much the same as quitting! My location, my hands on my radio, my place in the Earth/Sun machine that we call propagation, all abandoned because of a technological pollution that is out of control. Yep, thatā€™s quitting!

37

I am with Jonathan on this. I really donā€™t see the problem. At present, it offers significant advantages to the SOTA SWL, but not really to the chaser. That may well change of course.

Personally itā€™s not a form of chasing / SWLing that I would partake in as I doubt I would derive much enjoyment from it. Obviously Brian is in that camp too. But I donā€™t have an issue with others doing it, indeed I have been worked as an activator by people declaring on air that they are working via a remote station, or using their own TX but monitoring via a WebSDR. Not many; a handful.

38

Canā€™t remember were I read this but are you able use a quarter wave coaxial stub to help reduce noise, they connect to the feedline near the transceiver using a T connector acting as low loss inductor or capacitor.

73
Graeme

39

Nothing competitive? Why, then, the unruly pile-ups on HF? Because the participants have something to gain! It may be position in a table, or progress in filling a list, summit completes or completing Associations , or just the simple joy of working someone on a mountain. Whatever it is, it is important to the participants, they put real but ethical effort into it, and they have more to strive against than just other participants! This is why I think the matter is important. People switching around a selection of remotes and making life easy for themselves are reducing opportunities for other people prepared to do it the classical way. It is a matter of pride, too. My situation is as bad as it is for most urbanites, with S8-9+ noise on the lower bands and still S7+ on 20 metres, but I am able to get the necessary information from stations near overwhelmed in noise and still add a couple of thousand chaser points to my score each year.

I think that the thing that sticks in my throat is the roaming aspect that I have mentioned. Having a remote station and sticking with it is one thing, not my thing but at least tolerable, but switching around a selection of remotes finding the most effective one for each activation really makes the whole exercise pointless to me. Like going fishing with a stick of dynamite!

40

I think Iā€™m sensible - donā€™t you?
My reference to SOTA not being a contest, did not refer back to any earlier comments. I was making the point that SOTA isnā€™t and (IMHO) shouldnā€™t become a contest. It is a challenge for individuals rather than a contest. Hence rules applied in contests are often not relevant to SOTA.

I believe the challenge is against oneself to do better than one has done (for example) in the last month or year. Everyone is free to apply additional rules to themselves in addition to what is written in the official rules. One example would be that many activators will always carry their equipment from outside the AZ to their operating position, even if it means in some cases walking back down the hill from the car park, to be outside the AZ and then back up the hill into the AZ and to their operating position. Others simply walk a 100 metres or whatever from their cars.

Iā€™d hate to see the rule added and in so doing exclude people from SOTA either currently or in the future, due to restrictions at their home location (EMI or simply not allowed to have antennas).

Ed.

41

Its not relevant to this discussion Ed, it was about remote receiving originally. Your drifting into another area of discussion now, if it drifts any further Iā€™ll can the thread. I am trying to keep this technical.

No commentā€¦:joy:

Jonathan

42

Being able to configure and set up the own ham radio station, being able to copy a SOTA activation and be copied by the activator up to completion of a QSO is a challenge that Iā€™m pretty sure nost of us like and enjoy. Itā€™s what the technical aspect of ham radio is about and itā€™s always been.

From this point of view, it may have no or little interest for a technically motivated ham the copy and contact of SOTA activators by using SDR systems and remote stations in which configuration and set up they have not contributed at all and they would only be a user of those third party means.

At the same time, we all know and itā€™s fair saying that ham radio is and has always been enjoyed differently by different hams and despite of that, we are all hams, no matter the aspect of the hobby we like and we play most.

As every other human created activity ham radio is in constant evolution and nowadays hams may enjoy doing and studying different things and aspects of the hobby like, for instance, comparing and studying how a given signal from a SOTA activator is received by different SDR stations located in different points of the planet during an activation. This may be an interesting field to study propagation behaviour and nobody can say this is not technical enjoyment of ham radio too.

Iā€™ve never used SDR to receive but I know Iā€™ve been chased by hams using SDR to copy my signals and all I can say is I donā€™t mind at all. Just the contrary, Iā€™m very pleased to hear them and being chased by them as often as they want/can.

They have fun chasing us activators and we, activators, have fun being chased by them. Thatā€™s all it counts for, 2 x having_fun_hams.
Imagine one day when we are activating and our log has only 3 stations. After CQing for long minutes with no response in a cold summit and running out of time, battery, XYL patience or whatever you want to say, we finally get a call from a ham who is copying our tiny QRP signal through a SDR, we then complete the QSO and we, activators, have finally and luckily qualified our activation with the 4 necessary QSOs.

Whatā€™s the problem with that fourth contact being with someone copying us through SDR?

None, I think.

The purists may say there should be a different category for those using SDR and remote stations, but others could also ask a similar thing right now with respect to hams being unemployed or retired because they have much more time to enjoy the hobby than those having a full time job, family, children, dog, one hand only, one leg only or anything you can wish to consider.

Being SOTA a non competitive activity and being it only a hobby and a challenge to eachoneself, I canā€™t honestly find any arguments to deny any hams their right to enjoy playing radio by chasing SOTA with the help of SDR or remote stations, no matter where they are located.

I say this while stating that Iā€™ve never used a SDR for a QSO. Neither SOTA nor any other.

73,

Guru

43

You make an important point Guru, because actually on a weekend, Iā€™d rather be up a mountain then stuck in the shack tinkering on a hot dayā€¦

Plenty of time for that later prehapsā€¦

Jonathan