Very gracious of you to include my noodlings (https://www.zeroretries.org/i/140529022/easy-allstarlink) in your fine newsletter. Today, with the wind blowing hard and temperatures in the teens, we're getting power bumps. These are the conditions when RF carries the day!
An interesting perspective! I recall checking out w3w years ago but had that same privacy concern.
A few things spring to mind, and I say this as someone who is a new ham with a fairly broad range of interests for and against:
- w3w is an excellent concept in terms of pinpointing location. It's potentially less cumbersome than lat/long for precise location, and more efficient than grids.
- For POTA/SOTA/xxxxOTA uses, I see potential in terms of very localised information. For public outings such as POTA/etc, I see this as a positive in the way that folks can identify where in a park they are conducting their operations. This could help others in identifying good spots for setting up operations, committing to a body of knowledge about a particular park, etc.
- I see the three-word format as potentially problematic in the CW and digital domains - that can be a lot of characters to hammer out on a key/paddle. In the case of digital, thinking specifically of FT4/8, and not being fully aware of the adaptations necessary, I don't see how the three words could fit inside a standard transmission length in these modes.
- For non-xOTA ops, I see a bit of a risk in terms of privacy. Gridsquares give us a box in which we're operating, which is good to help us in recognizing how our propagation is working. 63 sq km (for a standard 6-character grid square) is a large tract of land to track someone down in. Since we appear to handle this kind of information on the regular, to my mind, this feels like a reasonable degree of accuracy in terms of operations. With this in mind, I'm aware that a large number of hams also make their address data available through LoTW, QRZ, or even the FCC database (ISED in Canada). Privacy is up to the individual.
Very gracious of you to include my noodlings (https://www.zeroretries.org/i/140529022/easy-allstarlink) in your fine newsletter. Today, with the wind blowing hard and temperatures in the teens, we're getting power bumps. These are the conditions when RF carries the day!
An interesting perspective! I recall checking out w3w years ago but had that same privacy concern.
A few things spring to mind, and I say this as someone who is a new ham with a fairly broad range of interests for and against:
- w3w is an excellent concept in terms of pinpointing location. It's potentially less cumbersome than lat/long for precise location, and more efficient than grids.
- For POTA/SOTA/xxxxOTA uses, I see potential in terms of very localised information. For public outings such as POTA/etc, I see this as a positive in the way that folks can identify where in a park they are conducting their operations. This could help others in identifying good spots for setting up operations, committing to a body of knowledge about a particular park, etc.
- I see the three-word format as potentially problematic in the CW and digital domains - that can be a lot of characters to hammer out on a key/paddle. In the case of digital, thinking specifically of FT4/8, and not being fully aware of the adaptations necessary, I don't see how the three words could fit inside a standard transmission length in these modes.
- For non-xOTA ops, I see a bit of a risk in terms of privacy. Gridsquares give us a box in which we're operating, which is good to help us in recognizing how our propagation is working. 63 sq km (for a standard 6-character grid square) is a large tract of land to track someone down in. Since we appear to handle this kind of information on the regular, to my mind, this feels like a reasonable degree of accuracy in terms of operations. With this in mind, I'm aware that a large number of hams also make their address data available through LoTW, QRZ, or even the FCC database (ISED in Canada). Privacy is up to the individual.