Hey Walt. I really enjoyed reading your comments. On the same sheet of music for sure. Thanks, Hank KI4MF NN0BBX
_____ From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of DuBose Walt Civ AETC CONS/LGCA Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:45 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Re: PC-ALE Signal Detect Before Transmitting: An Experiment See my comments inserted... Walt/K5YFW -----Original Message----- From: digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 4:54 PM To: digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Re: PC-ALE Signal Detect Before Transmitting: An Experiment Importance: High Agree with you Dave. About 99% of the time the internet is reliable. The weak link however, is the ISP. For example, I live on the coast of North Carolina along the Pamlico Sound. We are remote, so there are no cable modems or any such hardwire connections. Our high-speed provider uses microwave shots from multiple towers tied into several T-1 lines provided by AT&T or whoever they are now. I would say that the Internet is 99.9% reliable. However, its the 1/10 percent that bothers me because it could take down the Internet for days or even weeks. I can guarantee you the first utility to go is the internet, normally followed by power, and it does not take a hurricane to do it, just a good old nor'easter will do. To keep the radios alive a have a whole-house generator good for about 6 days of operation. From the emergency/MARS aspect I can see where the internet would be seen as unreliable. Wasn't too reliable in New Orleans either. I don't reference physical damage to the Internet; rather, software damage to the applications that operate the Internet. Most ISPs and backbone providers have backup power sufficient to run their facilities for many days...even weeks. However as CEO of one very large ISP told me, if I lose power I can still operate for 6 weeks off our own generators. But, if the Internet goes down, after 6 weeks I may not be able to order the fuel for by aux. power system. When the trees start to come down and the water rises you can count on the landline phones and cells going out as well. What's left? Ham radio, that's about it. On the pointed end of the stick our 2-meter repeater systems are most valuable as long as they are up. However, they too are prone to failure as well, as they are installed on commercial towers with limited generator back-up. After that it is simplex FM and HF. And consider if the Internet goes away, even for just a few days. What commerce is affected? Probably 60-70% of the just-in-time deliveries are made over the Internet... certainly this is true for all the large box stores and most food chains and suppliers for those food chains. How will suppliers know who needs what, when and where to deliver it. I am guessing that 95% of all automobile fuel is delivered based on automatic delivery sales using the Internet...and most of us use a credit card to purchase fuels for our automobiles over the Internet. The three gas stations that I use cannot sell gas...even for cash if they lose connection to the Internet. This is why they use a satellite connection to the Internet so that local ISP loss will not affect their operations. Is amateur radio going to replace this Internet need? No and fuel distributors ARE making or have taken steps to not depend on the Internet should it "go away". However, this is not a "flip of the switch" process. It might be several hours or days before they could sell fuel without connection to the Internet. The one aspect of ALE, and again I speak from AMRS-ALE experience, not PC, is that is has managed to standardize comms among the many government entities involved in disaster support and recovery. That is no small accomplishment when you consider the territorial toes and empires that were stepped on in the progress. Similar,to a lesser extent, as hams complaining about having to take FEMA courses that standardize response command and control. "We don't need no stinking class!" I remember my Q codes..... The thing to remember is that the President has issued Executive Orders which have not been overturned by Congress, nor are they likely going to be, that makes DHS (FEMA is under the DHS) the play caller in any "declared Federal emergency". Amateur radio then must play by their rules. In WWI and WWII amateur radio operations were controlled by what was called the War Department" in WWII. If we want to be a player during a "declared Federal emergency", we need to start playing their game else we stand to lose our standing during non-emergency conditions and those who will "play" might well be given the opportunity to "play" amateur radio during non- emergency conditions. This is an unsavory possibility but one which certainly is within the realm of possibility. When comms are available, how do we efficiently handle a large volume of traffic? If you have ever worked above 80 meters on voice nets it is surely not by SSB. That brings us back to this reflector - digital radio. The most efficient means is via digital modes - FEC error correction, PACTOR, GTOR, whatever the protocol, digital provides the greatest chance of a message being transmitted and received without error, and does not waste 5 minutes transmitting call signs and fills for a voice message under less than ideal conditions. True but less than 50% of active amateur radio operators have ever operated a digital mode and probably less than 20% currently have digital capability other than an AX.25 TNC. Then consider what percentage of those individuals have HF capability and of that groups how many can actually get on the air with a digital mode? My guess is that of the 500,000 or so "active" amateur radio operators in the U.S. (I only have figures for U.S.) less than 20,000 could actual get on-the-air on HF on a digital mode and most of them could only use PSK31. "Robustness" is a good word. For a poor comm link, (generally what you "expect on HF) and a signal that is 5 dB below the noise, you might not expect any signal recovery. However, there are several digital modes that can recover almost 100% of the transmitted data under those conditions. This is where ALE comes in by documenting these differing conditions and providing a link across the frequency with the greatest probability of success. Once the link is established, you can resort to any digital or analog means to convey the information. I believe that ALE is most valuable for net operation when there is little net activity and/or no net control station or formal radio operator assigned. At least that is/was the general thought back in the 1990's when DoD started to use ALE. This might still have some application to amateur radio operations but I don't believe that this is generally needed during disaster conditions. ALE propagation forecasting does not provide for long time propagation nor instant propagation for addition or change in frequency. (I need to say here that a channel can be considered any specific frequency that someone selects as an operating frequency and is different than channelization which generally refers to someone other than the operator or group deciding which frequency for the individual of group to operate on.) In disaster communications where NVIS operation is necessary, you really have only 80/60?/40/30 meters as choices and in practice, 80/40 will be the bands of choice. Even with 2 or 3 frequencies used in each band, ALE might not be a necessary tool. If regional operation is required, then 40/30/20/17/15 meters are probably going to be the bands used. In this case with 2 or 3 frequencies used on each band for communications, then ALE would be of benefit. ALE will cut down on the time it takes to establish contact. However it all stations are scanning/hopping at an independent non-sync rate, the likely hood of contact is less than manual contact time. ALE can be programmed to scan and sync so that ALE calling can be very efficient. Most interesting to remember that the initial concept of the internet was for redundancy - survivability of comms following a nuclear attack. Conceived by the same bureaucrats, but contracted out to the long-haired wizards at AT&T - Bell Labs. And today the Internet has become as vital to U.S. communications as the telephone was during the Cold War era. Thus today, we need some level of redundancy and survivability of communications at some level. Even a small capability is better than none at all and any level of independent capacity adds to the total capacity. I guess history repeats if we wait long enough. What was the subject again? I think you and I are on the same track Hank. 73 All. Walt/K5YFW Best, Hank KI4MF NN0BBX _____ From: digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Dave Bernstein Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 3:57 PM To: digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Re: PC-ALE Signal Detect Before Transmitting: An Experiment Oh, I see, Steve. You believe that the internet is insufficiently reliable, despite the multi-billion dollar investments by telecom companies and suppliers, governments, and research institutions. Thus there's an opportunity for amateurs to build a more reliable means of conveying email thats independent of the internet using HF links. I'm sure there are people on the planet who view the internet as insufficiently reliable, but most of them are in uniform, and have the multi-billion dollar budgets required to build and maintain networks sufficiently reliable for their purposes. My guess is that they don't use HF either; they use some combination of fiber and satellites, and are researching entangled quantum bits for their next generation of capability. The rest of us think the internet is just fine, except when the power goes down or the local ISP runs into trouble. Overcoming such outages is a MUCH simpler problem than replacing the internet with an HF- based system as Walt -- and evidently you -- suggest. 73, Dave, AA6YQ --- In digitalradio@ <mailto:digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com, Steve Hajducek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hi Dave, > > > At 01:59 PM 8/23/2006, you wrote: > >Re: "The technical world, and especially amateur radio should rise > >above that in concerted efforts to accomplish desired common goals." > > Amend to that ! > > > >A prerequisite for concerted action is to clearly state the goal, and > >to have that goal make sense. > > > >To me, pronouncements from inept bureacratic organizations are more > >likely to contain anti-goals then goals. > > > >Since we have a worldwide internet that does a fine job of > >transporting email messages, what's the rationale for building, > >organizing, and operating an HF-based world-wide email transport > >system that's entirely independent of the internet? The need for a > >means of rapidly compensating for local internet outages is obvious, > >but you're proposing something many orders of magnitude more > >comprehensive, complex, and expensive. The question is not "could > >such a system be created"; it certainly could. The question is, "why > >should we build and deploy it?". > > > > 73, > > > > Dave, AA6YQ > > My reply would that a reliable radio-to-radio e-mail system via > HF/VHF such as an implementation of STANAG 5066 within the Amateur > Radio Service would be just that, "a reliable radio-to-radio e-mail > system via HF/VHF", unlike the actual Internet which is not reliable, > especially during various types of natural and man-made > emergency/disaster scenarios. > > FYI - Open5066 has begun, see: http://open5066. <http://open5066. <http://open5066.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page> org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page> org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page > > FYI - The NPHRN has a mandate of September 2007 that will drive those > that support it and that it supports, see: > http://www.bt. <http://www.bt. <http://www.bt.cdc.gov/planning/coopagreement/pdf/fy06guidance_qa2.pdf> cdc.gov/planning/coopagreement/pdf/fy06guidance_qa2.pdf> cdc.gov/planning/coopagreement/pdf/fy06guidance_qa2.pdf > > Just what will take place within the Amateur Radio Service WRT STANAG > 5066 is unknown at this time, in the U.S. nothing will take place > until the FCC bring the rules up to date and even then it will depend > on just how much they update the rules as to just what can be > accomplished on HF. Other countries do not suffer the same > limitations and then some other countries suffer worst limitations, > it an age old story in that regard. > > What is obvious to me and many if not all is that for the Amateur > Radio Service to really be effective as a "Service" and not just a > way to have fun with radio, we need to have a full blown > radio-to-radio e-mail (or automated radio relay if you prefer) system > in place worldwide to meet the demands of the Amateur Radio Service, > be it based on STANAG 5066 or whatever and it needs to be done use > the PC Sound Device Modem (PCSDM) and before anyone laughs at that, > STANAG 5066 is already being done via the PCDSM commercially, refer > to: http://www.skysweep <http://www.skysweep <http://www.skysweep.com/binaries/doc/SkySweepMessenger.pdf> .com/binaries/doc/SkySweepMessenger.pdf> .com/binaries/doc/SkySweepMessenger.pdf > > P.S. - ALE is at the Physical Level of STANAG 5066 > > Sincerely, > > /s/ Steve, N2CKH > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster. <Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org> dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups. <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/> yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups. <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol> yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] 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/
