Hatfields and the McCoys?

[Andre' Kesteloot]

Hello, Bill,
I basically agree with almost everything you have written. One point though:

William Cantrell wrote:

> Granted, we aren't doing anything that hasn't already been done
> by the military to enhance LF communications,

No quite.

a) The military (and the broadcasters) are interested in   _100% reliability, 24 hours a
day_.    Hence their devotion to vertical polarization and ground wave coverage. We
Hams/Experimenters/Lowfers are interested in making contacts, and we will gladly work
with a system that only allows for QSOs 30 minutes a day, by using sky-waves for
instance. (I believe most QSOs on 136 kHz, between OH1TN and the British Hams to have
been of the sky-wave variety)

b) Also the military have a tendency to think that "more is better", i.e., larger
antennas, bigger transmitters. We, on the other hand, with our limited financial
resources, have to rely more on ingenuity.

c) Finally many things were tried by the military twenty or thirty years ago that
needed, literally, racks and racks of equipment to achieve. Nowadays, many of these
solutions can be replaced by a sound-card, or a 56002 Motorola DSP board.  This is where
we can shine. Many of us know how to write software.

Hence there are literally _lots_ of things we can experiment with that the military
would discount as being  "not quite reliable enough".

And that's where the fun begins, IMHO   :-)
73

Andre' N4ICK