If you normally avoid HF for forwarding, I doubt that anyone will set up and maintain stations capable of doing so for the rare times they are needed.
IMO, if a system is using the internet to pass routine traffic , then why is ham radio involved at all? I think this idea substitutes efficiency for the entire purpose of ham radio. If we want "efficiency", there is no need for ham radio 99.9% of the time. Of course, very few people will set up the capability to handle the "well maybe someday" 0.1% of the time. Besides, complex systems need to be exercised daily to ensure they work when they are needed. As for taking up crowded bandspace, the ham bands are empty today compared to what they were 30 and 40 years ago. 20m used to be crowded anytime it was open. Most of today's operators apparently don't even know what real crowding is. 73, Ken WA8JXM (since 1963) ===============original message follows=================== From: KV9U <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From everything I have been discovering, there is very little support (or even knowledge of ) the NTS/D. The current direction seems to be to move toward the internet as the solution for handling e-mail traffic with minimal ham activity. This is partially due to the desire for timely traffic handling (one hour maximum delivery time that can not be done by NTS/D) and partially due to the desire to reduce the number of automatic stations operating on HF. This is the basic philosophy of the Winlink 2000 system: only use ham radio for a short distance to bridge a gap in the internet, (unless longer distances are needed for wide spread disasters or for isolated stations such as boaters), keep HF stations off the air as much as possible to avoid HF forwarding due to the lack of bandspace as it is, and handle most of the short distance traffic via VHF/UHF packet to further keep messages off of HF, and also because an increasing number of new entrants do not have HF capability. For casual types of operation, I think this is a good thing. I do not consider such systems true emergency communications systems because with certain single point failures, the system becomes inoperative. The decentralized NTS system can still get through, albeit with inaccuracies in the information and not necessarily in a timely manner. Sometimes that is still better than nothing getting through at all. Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) 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/