Say Mike, > Rick I have no problem with messages but do have a problem with e- mail on HF that should be on the Internet instead.
How do you define "should be on the Internet?" Isn't that still the same thing as saying you have a problem with voice on HF that "should be on the public switched telephone network" instead? > You may not like what they are rag chewing about but then Amateur Radio has had rag chewing for a long time. Well if you can send that many messages there is no need for Pactor 3 in the voice bands since you should be able to handle it all where you are. The point of regulation by bandwidth is precisely so that we don't have to endure neverending battles about how much of the band should be voice, CW, digital, etc. > The Internet is the most fragile and unreliable service you could rely upon in an emergency. The idea is that you get to some digipeater outside of the area directly affected by the emergency and then drop the message into the Internet. The Internet is certainly not 100% reliable, but in general the vast majority of it is always working and is quite reliable; thousands if not tens of thousands of companies rely on this fact on a daily basis! > I saw the QST article but nowhere did it really indicate that they were looking at it from an emergency view point. The QST article was about 90% "fluff," in my opinion, in the sense that almost everything that the guy "learned" from doing the experiment was (very) old news. Of course, it's great that someone went out there to do his own experiments (self-education via hands-on experimentation is quite valuable), I just don't think it was worthy of the five or so pages that it took up... or maybe I'm just miffed that the article seems to be written as though they're presenting new results when it really should have been written up more in a "tutorial for newcomers" style. One of the best points the article, though, is that design limitations inherently within the protocol itself limit the effective distance that can be used before significant throughput is lost due to re-transmission. That is (as the article explains somewhat more clearly than I am here!), the propagation delay after about 10-12 miles is larger than the "assume the other side didn't get the packet" timeout. If they can figure out a way around this problem (e.g., if the WiFi chipsets allow that timeout to be programmable), that would be a great contribution. There's a huge difference, IMO, between a protocol designed for working "some miles" (as typical amateur repeaters do) vs. those designed for "some hundreds of feet" (as 802.11 is). If I were an EOC, I'd be much more comfortable with some protocol that was designed from the group up with this limitation in mind rather than someone saying, "Well, hey, I tried 802.11 and it seemed to work anyway (albeit with reduced throughput)... why don't we just use that!?" ---Joel 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/
