John, The content is extremely important. Commercial use of amateur radio is not permitted under Part 97. There is no question that the Winlink 2000 system is allowing commercial use, since these are messages that would otherwise go through commercial channels.
And, according to Part 97, it is not only the content, but the regular use of such transmissions that makes it illegal. Further, all modes on amateur radio were intended to be monitored by other hams. This is nearly impossible with Pactor 2 and 3. In fact, the owners of the Winlink 2000 system made light of that some time back as to how secure it was using the compression of data plus the protocol. While it is theoretically possible to monitor with the right software, I often wonder how many owners of Pactor modems (P2 and P3 primarily) are able to discern the messages. Perhaps some SCS modem owners can describe their experiences. 73, Rick, KV9U John Becker wrote: > If the guy at sea was a ham why would care what type of a message > he was sending? > > At 07:42 PM 3/8/2007, you wrote: > > >> I'm with you on that. Why the ARRL supports what is essentially long >> range Citizen's Band or Marine Band is beyond me. >> >> de Roger W6VZV >> > >
