Hi and merry christmas to all

I was a trial user for the last days and had some interesting QSOs in J3E, though I would like to start using CW in preparation and besides my future life as a real ham (doing the license in February).

Now I noticed, that to connect a straight key to HS4.0, I need to spend, additionally to the €30.- for the 1 year subscription:

- 30€ for the CW Keyer
- 25€ for the Interface Adapter

I do think that is a bit over the top and thus I didn't yet get my anually subscription and will have a serious thought about actually subscribing, although I do like the program, the idea behind it and everything.

Now don't misunderstand me, I fully understand that servers cost money and you may actually want to get some profit out of this, and there's nothing wrong behind it! I'm not one of those guys who say everything has to be free.

What do you guys think about the pricing model in HamSphere 4.0? Also related to Antennas, which can be really pricey.
Are there other ways to do CW? There is the CW mode in the normal transceiver, but I don't know how to use CW without the keyer and interface.

73
15HS775

Dear 15HS775,
Just as in real life, here at Hamsphere you "rent" the transeiver for € 30 per year plus, eventual 19% tax.
the transeiver does it's job even in the CW mode but if you like to add some extra's you have to pay, i mean in a real shop you buy the transeiver and if you like to do something in morse, you need a key, the seller shall not give it for free to you.
At Hamsphere4 it is the same, you get a basic set and if you like something extra, you have to pay., logic as 1 plus 1= 11 uhhh 2

Peter

Hi and merry christmas as well. :-)

In HS 3 you can work CW by typing into the chatbox, but that's not "realistic" of course.
In HS 4 it's like in a real transceiver: You'll need a keyer or paddle for acceptable use.

The CW function inside is only the "mode", the way of modulating (like FM, LSB, USB, AM and so on), not the hardware to do that.

If you see the price for real radios, antennas, matchers, meassuring-equipment and so on I think it's ok i HamSphere. It's a lot of effort to develope such things and take care about the "infrastructure".
Only the amount of 30,- € for sub. is yearly, all other things (like antennas, plugins and so on) you pay only one time.
It's much cheaper than real stuff, but of course not "real shortwave".

73 and good DX from Jörg :-)
JO31ok
Bochum / Germany

Hi Peter and Jörg

Thanks for your answers.

I fully understand that you need to pay for addons in whatever form. Though I may add 2 things:
- I 'm not stupid and I stated in the first post that I understand the need of a charge in general, please don't insult my intelligence.
- I need to buy a key (straight or paddle) anyway, using a real radio or HamSphere.

The main point is that I understand HamSphere as a Simulation of ham radio, though using voice comes 'with the radio', but for CW I don't only need a key, but additional software addons worth 55€. Wether it's worth spending that money or not will be up to every user himself, though I fear this might keep possible cw users away from HS40, and I didn't hear CW very often on HS40, another reason to think twice or even more times about spending that money - to maybe not be able to work many om in this way.

I will give it some more thoughts, but I would really like it as a means of training.

Best Regards
Pasqual
15HS775

Further, I'd like to add that 55€ is the price of a fully fledged AAA game, and there's a bit more code in there (ofc also more potential customers), just to put things into context.

Hi Pasqual,

I think we have no doubts about your intelligence. :-)
You are right, there are not so many CW user at the moment. But I think it's getting more and more with the time.

Ok, you can't compare the price of a game. Software is "relative" and more customers = lower price for each one, that's normal.
MS Office in the beginning was about 2.000,- Dollars/Euros and more, today (with millions of users) you get it on each corner for a handfull dollars.
And the price is not a question of "how long is the code of a program?".

Maybe the price for the interface + key is higher than on a real radio, but for that the HS-radio is much cheaper than a real one.

73 and good DX from Jörg :-)
JO31ok
Bochum / Germany

The users on RTTY, CW IS 5% servers are opened sometimes on some band it's possible work is almost none with who you can call cq 60 min and no one is spitting in their microphones are people with CB - 73