Re: [wsjt-devel] State QSO Parties

[Bill S. <g4...@cl...>]

On 26/09/2019 01:12, Bill Frantz wrote:
> On 9/25/19 at 3:52 PM, g4...@cl... (Bill Somerville) wrote:
>
>> On 25/09/2019 23:42, Bill Somerville wrote:
>>> whereas the index into a table of 64 values (48 states + 14 
>>> provinces + DC + DX) takes a mere 7 bits to store.
>
> This is actually an interesting problem. We can divide the contesters 
> into those activating the counties and those trying to contact them. 
> The worst case I've heard is 252 Texas counties, but the 7QP will also 
> have a big number.
>
> One other problem is that some of the state QSO parties take place on 
> the same weekend, and of course, some people try to make contacts in 
> more than one QSO party. If the sum of all counties involved is small 
> enough, it might be possible to support this behavior.
>
> Lets assume: For the US state QSO parties, each station only activates 
> counties in one QSO party. (We do need to support rovers.) It will 
> need to receive locations from all the counties in that QSO party + 
> the other states/provinces. People sending to it will need to know 
> which table it is using.
>
> We can select the table by the weekend data, and starting week before 
> for testing. There might also be a UI affordance which allows manual 
> selection for use in closed group testing. (For such testing, I 
> suggest ditching the radios and just using the built-in audio of 
> several computers in the same room.)
>
> For non-US QSO parties, similar techniques might work. Consider a QSO 
> party with the counties of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as 
> the activated counties. :-)
>
> 73 Bill AE6JV

Hi Bill,

you are missing a critical and fundamental issue. WSJT-X is used to make 
QSOs by exchanging all necessary information on the radio channel. You 
seem to be proposing that users must configure the software for a 
particular interpretation of the information bits being exchanged, that 
is not making an Amateur Radio QSO, at best it is a hybrid QSO with some 
information being passed by some means other than radio. Note that in 
FT4/FT8/MSK144 modes every receiving instance of WSJT-X or other 
applications claiming compatibility will decode exactly the same 
messages as each other given any particular transmitted message, the 
configuration of the software does not change the interpretation of the 
message bits. Unless you can find a way to send the "selector" for your 
proposed set of tables of message fields within the same message that 
sends the table index; then you are not proposing an extension to these 
modes but a different mode that does not pass all information via the 
radio channel.

The bottom line is that there are still a handful of selectors available 
in the FT4/FT8/MSK144 message payload bits that could be used for new 
message schemes but nowhere near the number that would be needed to 
support a series of county based QSO parties or similar.

73
Bill
G4WJS.