There's a lot to be said for doing things they way they've always been done if it's not broken. The reason lots of us use A/B/J is because those letters have 40+ years of history behind them and most of the people we talk to understand them.
Of course, it's important to explain that to newcomers, and several AMSAT presentations I have seen do include a slide on mode designations.
Using letters to represent bands in satellite communications is actually consistent with industry, which generally does use the letter designations especially in terms of satellites. No one outside of hams refer to frequency bands by their wavelength, though. I know lots of professionals laugh at hams over the wavelength habit.
73,
Paul, N8HM
On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 3:14 PM, skristof@etczone.com wrote:
Asking a question is not arguing.
Your two paragraphs below contain no rational arguments for keeping the letter based system.
Your argument is "We've always done it that way", so learn them and move on. Sorry, that doesn't cut it.
If you're going to use letters, can't there at least be a rational organizational scheme to the lettering system?
The current system looks like somebody just drew letters of a hat, then threw darts at a board of frequencies to see what the letter should represent.
The number based system would not be that hard. You decide on wavelength or frequency and go from there.
If I'm going to operate on SO-50, I'm going 2 m up/70 cm down. Most hams, whether they operate satellites are not, are likely to know what that means. I don't have to memorize or look up mode F or whatever the heck it is.
Steve AI9IN
On 2016-07-06 15:02, Paul Stoetzer wrote:
It's a lot more characters to type - and especially to speak.
I'm not even sure why we are arguing about this. It takes approximately 20 seconds to memorize a table of both the old and new designations and the frequencies they represent. Just learn them and move on.
There are a lot more complicated things that people have to learn to be knowledgeable amateur radio and amateur satellite operators. A few letters to represent frequencies isn't a big deal.
73,
Paul, N8HM
On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 2:52 PM, skristof@etczone.com wrote: What is the problem with just using the numbers? Why is using letters better?
(Not being snippy here, maybe there is a good reason. If so, please explain.)
Steve AI9IN
p.s. "We've always done it that way" is not really a good reason in and of itself.
On 2016-07-06 14:31, Peter Laws wrote:
On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 12:52 PM, Paul Stoetzer n8hm@arrl.net wrote:
Several parts of the website (such as the frequency guide) also use a less known custom with the second letter in lower case (to indicate that the second letter is 'down').
Eventually I would hope we would move away from "five and dime" or "nickel and dime" to using C/X in reference to 5 GHz uplinks and 10 GHz downlinks. Then let's start.
The actual designation has to be agreed upon first, though. Slash/no slash? Case/no case? Pick one, stick with it. What was the original decision anyway?
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