Message: 19 Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 21:39:06 -0500 From: "Rick Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Winlink take over?
Skip, With all due respect, (and you have considerable), it seems that some of the arguments may be counter productive and may in some cases affect the survival of amateur radio. "We are not a hobby in the eyes of the FCC. The hobby part is only due to a fortuitous intersection of our interests with what we are chartered by law." Rick, amateur radio definitely IS a hobby in the eyes of the FCC. The Commissioners just re-affirmed that in their recent ruling on Access BPL, Report and Order (R&O) in ET Docket 04-37: "We do not see a need to establish Access BPL-free zones around airports, military bases, hospitals, police stations and fire stations, as requested by NAC/Amherst. To the extent that these services warrant special protection, they will be afforded protection through the excluded bands, exclusion zones and consultation areas specified by NTIA. We similarly do not find that amateur radio frequencies warrant the special protection afforded frequencies reserved for international aeronautical and maritime safety operations. We note that in many instances amateur frequencies are used for routine communications and hobby activities. While we recognize that amateurs may on occasion assist in providing emergency communications, we believe that the general Part 15 provisions and the specific provisions being adopted herein for Access BPL operations are sufficient to protect these amateur operations. " Note that the FCC does not even consider amateur radio important enough for maritime safety operations to warrant any special protection to amateur frequencies from interference by Access BPL, but Winlink stresses maritime safety for their users as one of their main and most important functions! It is clearly so stated in the Winlink bulletin. Ironically, if the Maritime Radio frequencies ARE protected from BPL, and the amateur frequencies are not, then as a maritime safety operation, Winlink would be more reliable in providing some maritime safety communications to their users by using the Maritime Radio frequencies rather than the ham bands. "Looking at the five FCC Part 97, basis and purpose for amateur radio, you won't find anything suggesting a hobby component. What you will find is: #5 Advancing international good will. Some of us may help a little in that regard. #4 The expansion of a trained reservoir of operators and communications. Is that as important anymore? Probably not like it used to be, but maybe somewhat important. #3 Improvement through rules which advance skills in communications and the technical art of radio. We will look at that below. #2 Continuation of our ability to advance the radio art which is similar to #3 and then there is the big one and is the first one on the list ... #1 Recognizing and enhancing our ability to provide to the public, "a voluntary and non-commercial communications service "PARTICULARLY WITH RESPECT TO PROVIDING EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS."" Rick, the FCC apparently does not consider providing emergency communications a very "big one", because the Commissioners wrote, "While we recognize that amateurs may ON OCCASSION assist in providing emergency communications...". "It is only if we continue to advance the radio art and advance our communications ability and provide something of value to our served agencies that we will be allowed to even operate on our many frequencies throughout the spectrum. The goal that FEMA would like for us to have, is a total RF solution from anywhere to anywhere else and do it in very rapid real time delivery. We all know that this is impossible. But what we can do is meld our RF technology that we do very well with e-mail delivery. If we don't do it, we no longer have much to offer for message handling in many emergency situations. Besides, what real ham would not want to insure accurate (and timely) delivery of messages when even large parts of the internet and other telecommunications services are down?" Winlink was recently hit by a virus/worm on their central servers that was so serious they had to require all their users to re-register before using the system. This clearly illustrates the danger of relying on a central, or "star" network topology. Kill the "star" and the system is worthless. "At this time we do not have enough spectrum to adequately handle much traffic on RF paths. There are groups (e.g., LinLink) who are working on an RF only system. In the meantime we have only one system that actually works and can deliver this powerful communications method. A method not readily available to emergency organizations and government ... at least not yet." According to Winlink, all the "health and welfare" traffic on Winlink during the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster was handled just as normal email traffic with no need for any increase in frequencies. Obviously, in an emergency, much "normal" traffic will be replaced by emergency traffic, but the WL2K system is far below being fully utilized and can already handle a traffic increase of three to four times before reaching full capacity. "At the moment, it is illegal to transmit a voice message and then pass digital traffic on that channel (like they do in MARS). We need to make these changes so that we are not held back from using our communications capabilities. Ironically, SSTV folks can operate on voice channels and send images (pictures) all day long But they can not send "data." Even emergency data." I agree, but this has nothing to do with any attempted expansion of unattended Winlink email robots, which is the real problem for everyone else. Segmentation by bandwidth can solve the problem you mention, but Winlink tries to use segmentation by bandwidth as an excuse to increase their domination of the bands solely for the benefit of their less-than-1% of the FCC-licensed hams. They do not want to have QRM from other digital services, so they want to spread all over the bands so they do not have to wait for a clear frequency in the sub-bands. Are less-than-1% of the US hams so important that they should not have to wait for a clear frequency, but take it away from someone else? Even at the busiest times, the traffic load on Winlink is less than 30%, so the current frequencies are more than enough. What Winlink wants is not to have to WAIT for a clear frequency, like everyone else has to do. It is not necessary to send images over HF to accomplish most health-and-welfare communications, and Pactor-III is only 30% faster than Pactor-II for the average text email transfers. Just like one or two frequencies accomodate ALL the SSTV traffic in the world for exchanging pictures, so just one or two frequencies for Pactor-III would do the same, and it is not necessary, OR FAIR, to take up all the spectrum for a 30% gain in text email downloading and uploading or exchanging pictures. "Right now it is OK to transmit digital voice on voice channels and yet you can not transmit digital data AND voice on voice channels. Even emergency data. So lets get our bands divided rationally and base the channel not on the specific mode, but on the bandwidth. Narrow BW's for CW and other narrow digital modes, moderate for wider digital modes, and wider still for voice, digital voice, digital data, etc." I agree, but only with appropriate restraints on unattended operations, since they cannot, and do not, share our limited frequencies. "I will agree that allowing semi-automatic stations carte blanche access to large parts of our bands has to be carefully done. We should not give them all of what they ask for if they are using modes that can transmit on top of ongoing communications. Pactor modes do seem to be very abusive and probably we should never have allowed closed and proprietary modes on our bands. With newer technologies, such as the SCAMP mode (Sound Card Messaging Amateur Protocol) in the Paclink SCD program, you can NOT transmit on a busy frequency, unless the human operator intentionally does this by overriding the software control." The technology is unproven and Rick Meuthing has already stated that it can be disabled by the operator. The SCS modems Winlink uses today already have "busy channel" detectors for Pactor, yet it is common to see two or three strong Winlink Pactor stations fighting it out for use of a frequency, so either the "busy channel" detectors do not work, or they have been disabled. There really is no "semi-automatic" operation, because the operators turn their stations into fully automatic stations by turning frequency control over to the Airmail software. Rick refused to make it impossible to permanently disable "autocalling", with the excuse that it was legal outside of the FCC jurisdiction. As a boater myself, and also a registered Winlink user, I can tell you that the workload on the skipper is much too great, and the noise level too high, to sit in front of the transceiver listening for activity before trying to connect to get my email. It is more practical to just have Airmail automatically find a station to connect with, so there is enormous incentive not to listen first before trying to connect on a frequency, and the prevalence of Pactor stations transmitting on top of others shows that to be the case... "How do I know this? Because I have been one of the beta testers for this new Winlink mode. To be honest, I was skeptical that it would work all that well, but anyone who has actually tried the mode will attest to that it works very well indeed." I am sure it works OK, and if so, then it should allow more Winlink stations to use the sub-bands at the same time, because automatic "frequency skipping" is legal there, and a station can just automatically skip around until it finds a clear frequency. It is similar to trying to get the floor during a meeting where many people have their hands up and only one at a time can speak. You keep raising your hand until you get recognized. Lets use the SCAMP technology to efficiently use the sub-bands first, and then petition for any expansion that can be justified. "My ideal would be an open, non-proprietary system for amateur radio. While Winlink is a closed system, with private ownership, the ARRL is making some arrangements that should be able to insure that we can not be held hostage by the owners. The ARRL ARESCOM plan has already built Winlink into almost all of the communication pathways." "Recently, one of more strident Winlink supporters chastised me recently because he considers me an old fuddy duddy living in the past due to my lack of unequivocal support of all aspects of Winlink and because I have actually dared question some parts of the system. But as he he pointed out: "The NTS model is being *replaced* with the WL2K system. " I totally agree that the NTS model is wholefully inadequate and that WL2K is a fine replacement for message handling, but in NON-EMERGENCIES only, because a simple virus or worm can bring WL2K to its knees, just when it is needed most. So, it is important to improve and preserve the NTS system as an RF-only backup to using WL2K for communications, and not put all the eggs into one basket, but this is only my personal opinion. "While I am not totally sold on all aspects of Winlink 2000, we can pick and chose which portions will help us meet the needs of emergency communications for our local situations. I admit that the Winlink supporters can be a bit arrogant if you have ever followed their discussions attacks on anyone even questioning their system. But then some of the opponents of Winlink 2000 have also misrepresented the system. For those of us in the middle, well .... we seem to take flak from both sides:) The fact is that whether Winlink and other systems (and there will be other systems), will be deployed, will depend upon if they can do the job. But we hams can not do the job if we don't have enough frequencies to operate digital modes and are kept from advancing the radio art." The fact is that for 99% or more of emergency communications, the sub-bands are large enough to handle all WL2K communications, if autocalling and "busy channel" detectors are properly utilized. If Pactor-III and SCAMP are so much more efficient than Pactor-II, as Winlink always claims, then fewer frequencies are needed, because any one frequency is used less of the time. However, the truth is that, except for picture transfers, Pactor-III is much less efficient than Pactor-II, because it eats up so much bandwidth (five times the width of Pacor-II) for a speed gain of only 30%. The truth is that Winlink pushes to use Pactor-III only so their less-than-1% of the US hams do not have to wait quite as long to download and upload email, and could also send picture attachments. Really considerate use of the limited HF frequencies would optmize Pactor-II for text email in the sub-bands and allocate one or two channels to Pactor-III and SCAMP for catalog downloads or image transfers, since these are used so infrequently compared to text email transfers. The survival of ham radio depends on preserving the communications aspects of the hobby, in order to attract more young people, who find it fascinating, even if it is marrying computers with communications. Just turning the frequencies over to automated radio email gateways to the Internet does nothing but benefit a small handfull of people who need that remote access. It does nothing to produce trained operators, because anyone knows how to send an email these days. Technology has moved on, and data communicators using the LEO satellites provides remote email access that is more reliable and more available worldwide than WL2K, without taking away the ham frequencies from eveyone else trying to communicate, which is the whole point of amateur radio, as Thom points out. WL2K is a fine system and has its place in ham radio, but only in proportion to the less-than-1% of hams that ever need remote email access over radio. The sub-bands already equal 3.8% of the hams bands, and should be more than enough if Winlink would just use their technologies to fully utilize that 3.8% on a time basis, and wait for a clear frequency like everone else has to do. I appreciate your open-mindedness, and I hope you can suggest that WL2K use the tools they already have to more efficiently utilize the sub-bands, because there is just not enough room to spread 2400 Hz-wide signals all over the bands. If there were, the FCC would expand the phone bands because they are so terribly overcrowded, and the majority of hams prefer to communicate with voice, not CW or other digital modes. 73, Skip KH6TY The K3UK DIGITAL MODES SPOTTING CLUSTER AT telnet://208.15.25.196/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
