Joe, I think it is fair to say that the primary reason was that when we first came up with these technologies, the promoters and users lobbied heavily to get FCC approval. I believe that you will find that the ARRL was influential in getting the rules changed to allow this. There was a very great deal of discussion on this at the time. I think it is also fair to say that most hams were opposed to allowing automatic control on the HF bands.
The compromise was that the semi-automatic stations would be able to place their stations anyplace in the text data areas of the bands providing that their bandwidth was kept to 500 Hz or less. If they were fully automatic, they had to stay in the narrow "automatic" portions of the bands.If they were semi-automatic, but over 500 Hz in width, then they had to also operate only in "automatic" areas. This was done primarily to accomodate Pactor 3. While there are no more FCC declared emergency portions of the bands, good amateur practice is to stay away from those areas once you become aware of their existence. Emergency nets are often formed to handle potential traffic, but it would not mean that they are formed for emergency traffic only. Most would not be emergency, but there might be some priority and heath and welfare traffic. E-mail access via HF has been in place for many years and is a "done deal" here in the U.S. I don't see any practical way to stop it now without a huge groundswell from the amateur community and that doesn't seem likely. If you want HF to e-mail to be available for emergency use or for providing messaging from disaster areas, it has to be something that is available and frequently used by the hams who will try to gain access during difficult times. Speaking from experience with Winlink and the earlier Aplink system (not the same as Winlink 2000), it is not always that easy to gain access to these HF systems at the time you might want it. My belief is that there needs to be many, many, HF servers available, preferably on the 160/80/40/30 meter bands so that a server can be accessed from most locations when you need to access them. While I have been told by the owner that this is not possible for the Winlink 2000 system, it certainly could be for a narrow mode system, such as PSKmail, which does not have the weakness of the underlying infrastructure of Winlink 2000. And does not use such wide bandwidths. 73, Rick, KV9U Joe Ivey wrote: > I have yet to understand why the FCC allowed automatic stations on the > ham bands in the first place. I hate to see ham radio being used as an > internet email service that in 99% of the case the mail is not related > to ham radio. > > I think that 99% of the ham support handling emergency traffic and > would stay clear of any frequency that was being used for such a > purpose. A lot of people including hams do not really understand the > term "emergency traffic". Simply put it means the threat to life, > injury. and property. 99.99% of all emergencies are confined to a > general local area. It very rare that one needs to send traffic from > the west coast to the east coast or Washington DC. Ham radio serves a > great purpose in these cases and we as operators should help out when > we are needed. But for someone out in his boat just wanting to check > is email should not be allowed on the ham bands. > > My 2 cents worth. > > Joe > W4JSI >
