OT Old Tech vs. New Tech

[fixxit]

I suspect that some of the readers of this forum (including me) are Amateur Radio (ham radio) operators.

This is an interesting contest between the old technology versus the new technology.

Those of you who missed the Jay Leno show on Friday, May 13, missed a very funny sequence.

He had on two Ham Radio CW (morse code) operators dressed in old time Morse Code telegraph operators garb with visors, armbands, and suspenders.

They were pitted against two speed award winning text messagers (over cell phones) and dressed as, well, the "normal" dress of young men today.

Each had to transmit a message to their colleague.
Guess who won?
If you want to see the sequence, click on http://www.KU3O.net and follow the instructions. Lots of fun.


------------------
457863656C73696F72202100


[This message has been edited by fixxit (edited 05-17-2005).]

[Kansas_Farmer]

I saw that, it wasn't even a contest, the ________________won hands down. The other guys should never have even shown up.

[Stanko]

That was good. Although I prefer to ring up and talk.

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

The text messagers should have used compression technology: send "geico saying".

To be fair, they should have sent a picture to eachother and see who wins

-Adrian

[zl1byz]

CW Rocks!

Being a ham myself and almost exclusivly CW, that was music to my ears.

It was a good hoot, not to be taken too seriously.

Compression! haha CW has it's own compression built in. When the code was invented it wasn't done randomly. The most used letters are the shortest to send and we do use abreviations for common words, although you couldnt really abreviate any of the words in that sentance.

John.

[pete913]

I work exclusively CW myself. No need for big linear amplifiers that open and shut the neighbors garage door, and take over their tv's. Been down that road. No way is a one finger typist on a cell phone ever gonna beat even a mediocre CW operator for speed. That wasn't even a fair contest.

[Your Old Dog]

That time could easily have been cut in half with fasters ops. Those guys were likely just avid DX'ers like many of us. They must have been in order to copy thru the QRM of Jay. QRZ DX de NV2A

[This message has been edited by Your Old Dog (edited 05-17-2005).]

[mmambro]

FB OM

QRQ

73 de K2IM

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by mmambro:
FB OM

QRQ

73 de K2IM</font>

Don't make me start talking in Hex or Binary again....

-Adrian

[Swarf&Sparks]

Phone! Talk!
anyone here remember a Strowger switch?

[mmambro]

Once mastered, sending and receiving CW brings a soothing sense of tranquility that comes with subconconscious mental activity.

Although I don't have time to ham actively, I've been surprised at the sharp decline in CW activity over the past several years.

I think of CW as the shaper of the communications world.....yup...I have one.

73 de K2IM

[ibewgypsie]

I personally liked the story about the job in the paper about hiring telergraph operators.. So many people showed up they couldn't interview them all. So they got the bright ideal to transmit morse over the speaker in the room.

They hired the ones that read it and followed the directions.

3phase, it is a 2 bit-binary transmission.
David

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

Dave,

What's a 2 bit binary transmission?

-Adrian

[Allan Waterfall]

We still use two tin cans and a length of string here.

Allan

[Doc Nickel]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">What's a 2 bit binary transmission?</font>

Binary is 0 and 1, of course, "off" or "on". When the Morse key is depressed and makes the audio tone, that's a 1, when it's not transmitting a tone, that's an 0.

2 bit says there's two states to the binary signal- in the case of Morse, the length of the tone, the "dot" and "dash".

Doc.