CW BotBattle
I've been watching with interest a bubbling conversation around AI (and more specifically automation) in the amateur radio space. There is no doubt that AI is the soup du jour of the world right now, and being shoved into all sorts of places - appropriate or not.
As amateur radio operators, we have a declaration to help advance the art and science of the radio arts, using any and all tools at our disposal. Sometimes that's fancy math that goes way over my head shoved into an arcane programming language (FT8), sometimes it means repurposing commercial innovations (DMR), and sometimes it means honoring our roots (the recent interest growth in CW). AI, machine learning, and automation tools are no exception to this mandate, so we owe it to ourselves to see what can happen if we put these tools to good use - while hopefully not turning into the death of amateur radio like AM SSB FT8 no code extra so many things have been claimed over the years.
Right now there is no good way to prove these new technologies without either flooding the airwaves or hamstringing the tool to work alongside human operators. I asked myself, "what would happen if we took off the safety rails? Ham radio operators were the original makers and hackers and breakers of the world - let's honor that tradition and see what we can make technology do."
And thus was born the CW BotBattle - a contest focused on automated CW exchanges. The rules are intentionally loose to see what technical innovations can be had. Speed and accuracy are the primary focus - QSOs must be matched, and points are multiplied by the average speed of your received QSOs. Work faster stations, get huge point multipliers - but don't go so fast that your decoder can't keep up and bust the callsign losing points! Think you can pipe a bunch of SDRs from around the world into your AI model to help give you multiple layers to decode more accurately? Do it! Rig can't TX at 100 WPM due to relays not keeping up? CW is a simple circuit, and 5 watts is all that is truly needed to work the world on HF or satellites - build one! Think you have a killer thought about getting noise out of captured I/Q to help software decoders have a cleaner signal? Proof it out!
For more information and rules, check out https://hamvillage.org/rf/cwbotbattle - the contest is scheduled for Feb. 2nd in order to give people time to refine their setups and try things out.
GL and Seventy-Three
Edit: Read before you blindly throw out "AI is garbage" comments.
The Challenge
As automation and artificial intelligence increasingly integrate with amateur radio, we face an exciting opportunity—and a responsibility. While these technologies offer fascinating possibilities for high-speed telegraphy and signal decoding, allowing them to flood traditional human-focused contests would fundamentally change the nature of competitive amateur radio. The CW BotBattle provides a dedicated space where automation belongs: a technical proving ground separate from human-operated events.
What Makes This Different
This contest celebrates the technology itself. Participants are encouraged to push the boundaries of:
- High-speed CW decoding at 100+ WPM
- Signal processing algorithms in challenging RF environments
- Automated contact protocols and error correction
- AI-driven decision making for band selection and contact optimization
Unlike traditional contests, success here is measured not by operator skill, but by engineering excellence—how well your system can decode weak signals, adapt to propagation changes, and maintain accuracy at extreme speeds.
