BREAKING: Local Ham Claims “Incomprehensibly Dense” 128-QAM Signal Has Finally Made 2-Meter Band Worthwhile
FARMINGDALE, NY — In what experts are calling “a profound breakthrough in unnecessary complexity,” local amateur radio operator Brent “Kilo Charlie Two Echo Alpha Tango” Jamison announced Sunday that he successfully transmitted a 128-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) signal across his backyard using only a Baofeng, a Raspberry Pi, and 47 separate levels of modulation correction.
“We’re talking 7 bits per symbol, baby,” Jamison boasted, while pointing proudly at a waveform display that looked less like a signal and more like Jackson Pollock had eaten a sine wave and vomited on a constellation diagram.
The groundbreaking transmission, which combined 128-QAM with forward error correction, pseudo-random interleaving, adaptive beam steering, selective multipath rejection, and something called “Quantum Entangled Pre-Emphasis Phase Gyration,” reportedly carried a 3-second MP3 clip of someone saying, “CQ CQ, anyone copy?” in eight different dialects of Klingon.
“Every symbol encodes not just data, but a story,” Jamison explained. “A beautiful, mathematically tortured story told across 14 harmonically-optimized dimensions of phase space.”
The signal, which was received by a software-defined radio tied to a salvaged TV satellite dish, was successfully demodulated after 6 hours of intense FFT analysis, 3 firmware crashes, and a blood pact with the ghost of Edwin Armstrong.
Critics argue the effort may be impractical for everyday amateur use, citing factors like Earth's ionosphere, the laws of thermodynamics, and the fact that no one on 2 meters knows what QAM even stands for.
But Jamison remains undeterred.
“With enough error correction, you can get clean audio through a microwave,” he said. “And with enough phase distortion compensation, you can reach the ISS with a wet noodle and a Type-N connector.”
ARRL officials are reportedly reviewing the technique for potential integration into next year’s Field Day rules, specifically under the new “Obfuscated Transmission” bonus points category. Preliminary drafts suggest 128-QAM with dynamic carrier shifting and recursive Doppler pre-distortion could score upwards of 10,000 points if accompanied by a 20-page explanation in LaTeX.
Meanwhile, the local repeater trustee issued a brief statement:
“If he tries to transmit that chaos on 146.520 again, I’m cutting the coax.”
