Re: [wsjt-devel] Q65 Pileup Feature Request

[Lance C. W. <w7...@bi...>]

Hello Charlie et al,

Yes, I invite "blind callers" for the following two reasons:

1. I need their calls to be decoded to populate the Q65 PILEUP ACTIVE 
STATIONS LIST ("ASL") and provide the added sensitivity when it comes 
time to participate in a contact exchange with them.

2. Due to the nature of Faraday Rotation on VHF EME, there may appear to 
be "one way propagation" for extended periods of time. If people waited 
until they copied me before calling, I may have lost the opportunity for 
a complete Faraday Rotation cycle to receive them and add them to the 
ASL. Since many of the callers are horizon-only stations utilizing 
narrow ground gain antenna lobes, there are by nature very limited 
windows during which to complete with them; having them delay the start 
of the contact until they decode me further reduces the available time 
for a contact exchange to take place.

I am sure you can appreciate the huge difference between this type of 
weak signal contact and the essentially instantaneous strong signal 
reciprocal contacts on HF using Fox/Hound or Superfox.  On VHF EME, it 
is quite an advantage to be able to determine which station(s) to engage 
in a QSO that might be able to provide a quick reciprocal type of 
contact. Currently, the only way to do this (without resorting to the 
internet to have people report "I am decoding you now", which 
essentially makes the contact invalid) is to try to work through the 
pile of callers, replying to each in turn to see which ones may be 
capable of completing a quick "reciprocal" type of contact with you.  
Thanks to the ASL, it may be that some of the callers to whom you reply 
may actually receive your message, although you won't know it until you 
receive "RRR" from them at some later time.  However, the best success 
rates involve choosing the proper QSO partners with which you have the 
highest probability of making a quick reciprocal contact thinning out 
the number of callers.

It struck me that the Q65 PILEUP mode may finally actually provide the 
means to transmit this information! I thought that there might be room 
for this information the way the R report is inserted in TX3. I wonder 
if the program could automatically send a message in place of TX2, but 
similar to TX2 except with some other character (perhaps just a dash 
instead of a space) to indicate that the station copied a yellow spike 
during the receive cycle immediately preceding their transmit cycle. 
This would be in place of TX2, and would revert to the standard TX2 if 
no such yellow spike were received. It would not affect the AUTO 
SEQUENCE of either station (other than the current action upon receipt 
of a TX2 message) but would simply be displayed as a received message. 
But it would be a sign to the DXpedition (or other) station to "please 
select me next because I am copying your trace".  I suspect that the 
activation of this feature should be manually turned on by the callers, 
although I guess it wouldn't hurt to have it running all the time 
(unless it would add significant processing to the computers on one or 
both ends).

Perhaps there are significant impediments that would make something like 
this impractical. However, after hours of trying to answer callers one 
at a time who don't copy at the time you tried them, I think it would be 
a tremendous improvement if it were in any way possible!

Thank you for your kind consideration, and for the HUGE advance that Q65 
PILEUP provides. It is already the standard on 6m EME! VY 73, Lance

On 19 Aug 2025 03:58, Jim Brown via wsjt-devel wrote:
> On 8/18/2025 8:32 PM, Charles Suckling via wsjt-devel wrote:
>> It seems from your last point that you suffer a lot from 'blind 
>> calling'.  This was a real problem during the early days of Superfox 
>> mode, and was overcome by code that prevents a 'hound' from 
>> transmitting at all until they have managed to decode the signal from 
>> the fox.
>
> Hi Charles,
>
> To understand Lance's request, you must understand his operating 
> conditions. He does 6M moon-bounce Dxpeditions to remote places, which 
> requires very low noise, high power, and big antennas. To minimize his 
> need for power, which translates to minimizing the cost of buying and 
> transporting fuel over oceans, and then to remote locations where 
> there's no noise, he INVITES blind callers. This is a method of 
> operation he devised years ago. He's currently somewhere in the South 
> Pacific, don't remember where.
>
> This is his website.  https://www.bigskyspaces.com/  Scroll down to 
> see his instructions to callers.
>
> I would encourage the development team to take his request seriously 
> and do your best to accommodate it.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Lance Collister, W7GJ (ex WA3GPL, WA1JXN, WA1JXN/C6A, ZF2OC/ZF8, E51SIX, 3D2LR, 5W0GJ, E6M, TX5K, KH8/W7GJ, V6M, T8GJ, VK9CGJ, VK9XGJ, C21GJ, CP1GJ, S79GJ, TX7MB, TO7GJ, 3B9GJ, ZD9GJ, H40GJ)
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