Well, the internet was reality and there was no way to stop it. The only way that radio amateurs could have prevented the linking to the internet would have been to making it illegal and I don't think many would support you on that.
Radio by itself has a benefit. Primarily an emergency benefit, if the system is set up to work under those conditions. The internet has a much larger benefit since it is tremendously faster, can handle so much more traffic, with many additional benefits. By combining radio with the internet you have a synergy that neither one can do as well by themselves. At least at one time. Now with portable devices that are radio transceivers, I do admit that the commercial market has more of this available to everyone, not just radio amateurs. I can not imagine this as being viewed as a bad thing. E-mail is tremendously more useful than the hierarchical packet system because it works not just for hams, but for anyone with e-mail, which is ubiquitous in countries such as the U.S. What I wish for is a system that could do both. We had a crude version of it for a short time with the Netlink system, but that was discontinued. That way, you can send e-mail via amateur radio in areas that would be completely impossible to use cell phones, blackberries, etc. and if there is an emergency situation, you can still (hopefully) get it to work and you still maintain the hierarchical system for within amateur radio circles. Even when packet was in its heyday, a very large amount of data went via "wormholes." And they were really the early stages of the internet. Some of the packet gurus hated to admit they used these mostly landline connections though:) CW has been in decline over many years now, but it still has hobby value and maybe a pinch of emergency value too. Not a lot, but a little bit. It is nice to read of stories of guys who are back packing in remote areas and can use their miniature CW rig to contact the outside world and send messages to keep others posted on their location and to summon help if it was ever needed. True story: A friend of ours, has parents that live in the Pacific NorthWest. As you may know, in the past few weeks they had severe weather problems and loss of power and communications. After about a week and a half the individual was becoming very concerned since they had not heard from their parents during that time. They were able to get a communication to their parents from Wisconsin. But is wasn't through the NTS system, nor using HF (they are Techs and did not have this capability), and certainly not through any Winlink 2000 system since it is strictly an e-mail delivery system. Rather, they got on their computer and located a ham within 26 miles of their parents home via ... Echolink. The ham on the other end agreed to drive to their parents home and report back. Which they did a few hours later to report that everything was OK. This is not unlike how it was a few decades ago when I would get some NTS traffic from the CW or voice nets and hand deliver it, sometimes many miles away, because there was no telephone number. While most traffic was of little importance, I did have one once that was a fairly important situation and got a lot of satisfaction out of delivering the message to the final recipient. Sincerely, Rick W. Mark Milburn wrote: >My view would be that any change to the packet RADIO >system to utilize the internet was a step in the >direction of eliminating it altogether. The value of >packet radio is the emphasis on the radio part. Once >you say the system would be more useful if the end >result was email, then why utilize radios at all? >Just email the person you want to contact. But that's >just my personal opinion and it is obviously out of >step with the prevailing view. I like CW too, so I >guess I'm just stuck in some previous time zone. That >happens to us older guys...hi. > >Have a good one today. > >72/73 Mark KQ0I >Des Moines, IA > > >
