Well my county isn't even trunked. My city is analog trunked. My county still uses 2 GHz analog links between VHF receive sites.
Yes the dynamic of American business has a large impact on how we as hams are lagging or leading the way. Garry is right, now it's mega-million research labs behind consumer/ commercial technology instead of smaller business research of 20 or more years ago. The technology has also become much more complex and integrated, making it harder for the average ham to work with. (I'll refrain from the drivel about how a shift on quantity of hams instead of building quality is also part of this.) However on a good note, we are headed inch-by-inch to more of a software defined radio platform. So I was very pleased to see the recent ham radio articles in the recent issue of Linux Journal. While America might not have many electronic repair techs as compared to from the 1960-1980's, as most electronics is produced overseas and we are much of a throw-away society.. I think we still have some American programmers... it's time to welcome or entice them to the hobby. I have to admit I was drawn to D-Star because of the homebrew projects developing. I'm not a big talker, more of a tinkerer. I still feel some sort of marriage between D-Star and Asterisk/SIP could be a potential big discovery. Even the MotoTRBO stuff doesn't yet have hooks for business to interconnect their VOIP phone systems to their radio systems. Or how about twitter style short text message feeds to groups radios to remind club members of meetings etc. Really there is still a lot of even small ideas that can be implemented. --- In dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com, Gary Pearce KN4AQ <kn...@...> wrote: > > At 05:45 AM 12/20/2009, Nate Duehr wrote: > > > >On Dec 19, 2009, at 12:24 PM, Gary Pearce KN4AQ wrote: > > > > > In doing a little research, I learned that SSB was originally created > > for long distance telephone use, for things like the Atlantic cable as > > Adam notes, in the early 1930's. It first appeared in Amateur Radio > > experimentally in 1947. QST began running regular articles about it in '49. > > > >Hams were about 17 years behind the times back then, and continue that > >tradition, eh Gary? ;-) > > > >Nate Duehr, WY0X > ><mailto:nate%40natetech.com>n...@... > > Hmmm, a complex question. While P25 is more than a decade old, my little > town is still using an analog trunked system for public safety. (On the > other hand, they built one of the first trunked systems in the > area, before P25 was available.) There's still plenty of analog > commercial/public-safety two-way out there. So hams may be late to the > digital party, but we're not the last to arrive. > > As for Sideband, maybe someone else has a better handle on the history, but > as I understand it, hams were among the first to apply what was a wire-line > telephone technology to radio. And it wasn't until 1957 that General Curtis > LeMay K0GRL/W6EZV applied his ham radio experience to the Air Force radio > systems, converting them from AM to SSB. > > Kind of hard to compete with the mega-millions research labs, but now and > then we score a hit. We'll probably discover something about digital voice > that nobody else thought of first. > > 73, > Gary KN4AQ > > > > ARVN: Amateur Radio//Video News > Gary Pearce KN4AQ > 508 Spencer Crest Ct. > Cary, NC 27513 > <mailto:kn...@...>kn...@... > 919-380-9944 > www.ARVideoNews.com >
