There was no detection available when the rules were implemented (1995?). That is the reason for the automatic areas. It was primarily intended for fully automatic stations, such as the Winlink system (perhaps the is still true for the NTS/D system which continues to use the old Winlink software), and for AX.25 store and forward.
Winlink 2000 no longer has any fully automatic stations where both sides of the communication are done with no human monitoring. In fact, the Winlink 2000 folks recommended a prohibition against fully automatic stations, but eventually withdrew that after creating quite a firestorm with the automatic forwarding community who were using amateur radio to forward the messages. They only use semi-automatic (one side human, one side machine) and that is permitted any place in the text data sub bands as long as it is under 500 Hz. There is no rule requirement for busy frequency detection at this time. The viewpoint at the time was that hopefully there would not be too much of a problem with hidden transmitters. However, as a compromise, the wider P3 mode requires it to be placed within the automatic sub bands. Winlink 2000 then moved the traffic off of amateur radio and put it prmarily on the internet. And that includes 100% of all the autoforwarding. There is no HF autoforwarding capability in Winlink 2000 under its current design, but that may someday change. The positive outcome is that this drastically reduced the communications load of HF store and forward and drastically increased the delivery speed. This works well for casual traffic such as RV'ers sending e-mail from remote sites. It is NOT a serious emergency tool, even though they push this incessantly! It is a very fragile system that requires many things to work perfectly or it does not work at all. I could not imagine using it as a major communications method if I was using it for blue water boating or other fairly dangerous activities. I could see it used as a secondary or tertiary backup for other systems. 73, Rick, KV9U Danny Douglas wrote: > As long as cw, rtty, and data are allowed on all freqs, it would still be > illegal for them to transmit on top of a known QSO no matter what portion of > the band they are in, including the area where they are only allowed to > transmit. (NOT only they). Thus the need for detection everywhere they > transmit. > >
