Grind My Gears Moment!!

Other Equipment Topics fer Yakin 'bout.
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!KANT
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Grind My Gears Moment!!

Post by !KANT »

Wider Is Better...

Okay, like we eSSBers weren't already quite conscious of this mantra. But it still entertains (and at times frustrates) me to encounter many situations where information has to be repeated more than twice to be fully understoodj. This is most notorious during Nets. At first, I figured the culprit is poor band conditions. Second, maybe such a pileup of check-ins the Net Controller was overwelmed. But there was no pile up and band conditions were optimal. 

The Controller could not differentiate between Reed or ReeSE. Most stations also could not discern between the two. Eventually phonetics was used to "clarify" the calling station. All of this took approximately 25 seconds--not long when you think about it. But considering none of these recieving stations could hear any difference themselves, that's a bit of a stretch, especially if it were under emergency conditions. 

Another example was (again) during a Net. But this time the suffix of the calling station could not get any better than "ZCE". Many combinations erupted through the airwaves--"CCE, EZC, ZDC, VEZ, etc." Of course, the magic of phonetics again saved their day. 

I still find it a wonder that most operators who operate at 2.4KHz honestly believe this to be the best bandwidth for SSB voice communication. Strength for not preferring wider bandwidth..."all that extra band noise". Yea, there is also the, "don't want to hear all those other stations on the side SPLATTERING!!" Ummm, good points (I guess), but that band noise is greatly reduced when stations are ABOVE the noise floor and especially so when used in combination with RF Gain controls [DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!!!!!] 

The arguement of splatter is a touch-n-go. Just last week I heard a S-9 station using a 1000MP with a slight bit of speech processing, but he was tearing up everyone within 4KHz--just awful. Ok so I'm preaching to the choir, but America (and beyond), wider is better....and we know this to be very true...no??

OZman...  

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