I also disagree that packet radio is dead, at least, outside
of hyperdeveloped technologically based societies....8-)
I believe that some people have right to grow tired, and
change goals. That's OK, but the sky is not falling.
>From what I read, packet is much alive in Europe. Also it
seems to be in a lesser degree in Australia (that is the
perspective I get from what I see, but I might be misjudging
some facts). Of course, the laws of offer and demand that
rule the market make high speed modems massively available
at low prices, what cannot be done with ham radio stuff
because it is a small market....it sent AEA to suicide. Some
people have become appliance operators and DO NOT SOLDER A
SINGLE CONNECTION. C'mon.....is this ham radio, where is
experimentation then ?
Of course, there is no point in running a BBS with no users,
even more if the sysop is not one of them....
It is impossible to argue that with Internet, V90 modems and
cellphones there is no need for E.T. to have a ham license
to call or write home...but we aren't so narrow minded,
aren't we ?
The whole wide packet radio world is not as the tiny gloomy
fragment Karl sees from his QTH. I believe it is merely a
downswing in the wave, but nothing else. CW has not
dissapeared, even when there are people that HATE CW. You
still can hear some hard dies using AM in 160, 80 and 40
meters...becoming scarce, but they still are there, there is
people DXING from places here you can call anywhere in the
world with a cellphone, etc etc, etc.
Things change, and possibly after 20 years of the appearance
of the VADCG protocol we are not in the initial inrush
anymore. AX.25 is not perfect, and there still seem to be
protocol issues unresolved or badly chosen. So, there is
room for improvement. It seems that the modulation format,
cheap and popular then, was not the best choice from the
performance standpoint. And so KISS, 6-pack, DAMA, etc.
Now I keep on running a BBS, and sysoping another. At home,
I am running a HF Pactor-II link with FBB, in the University
Radio Club we are still running HF packet. And I say still
because after I discovered Pactor-II, it seems to me that HF
FSK is a waste of spectrum. When you compare, there are some
24 dB of difference between a good HF FSK modem used for
packet and Pactor-II. You cannot get rid of the threshold
effect when using FSK, while PSK does not have a thereshold,
and there are also huge coding gains in Pactor-II. I may not
be the best suited to explain all this, but there is a huge
difference between holding a link with pins running 600
watts and running a solid link with 25 watts and a
G5RV....that is, HF packet and Pactor-II. Maybe we could
have a better packet network if we used a better modulation
method and improved channel access protocols. I do not
believe that all that can be done has already been done in
packet radio. See, high speed packet links (1.2 Mb)
homebrewed in Slovenia are also PSK...isn't there a message
in all that ?
There is still lots of room for improvement, HF is not dead,
packet is not dead, and many of my users have no Internet
access...so there are users, eager to run digital modes, and
many others willing to build their modems using op-amps and
MSI digital chips. Some, even, do not have a telephone and
do not receive fresh magazines....so, packet radio is a
window to the world, a world with common goals and
interested in ham radio.
I agree that some discussions I have seen lately on the
PBBS's have been illustrative for me. Sometimes I hated to
see that passion was getting over reason, but at the end I
believe we all understand a bit more about BPQ, Flexnet,
DAMA, 6-pack, KISS and all that stuff. And that is ham-radio
too.
Here packet radio is far from dead. It has even been used
for others to see their logs in Internet. We have no country
wide packet network, just islands of activity. But a year
ago, a group of swedish hams got together with a group of
cuban DXers and wanted to do it. How it was done ? Well, 250
km link was set up using an existing 2 m voice repeater up
in mountain, feeding ASCII lists of the log to a packet BBS,
also running an e-mail gateway, and then, Internet to
Sweden, where it was fed to the web page. In Heard Island,
Microsats were used to send the logs to Belgium. So, it is a
matter of motivation, too! It would have been easier if in
those cases they had a telephone available, but IT WAS DONE
!! Use whatever is available, and DO IT !!
Some time I set up a Packet Cluster link with a friend, and
it caught up ! True, it is not heavily used in daily basis,
but I am often asked to have it up for some coming
contest...
I could be ranting forever. I have seen other replies about
the same line as mine. I do not mean to be offensive, please
understand that, Karl. I have learned a lot from ham radio
in my life, and about Linux from many subscribers of this
list.
There is a poem by the spanish poet Calderon de la Barca
that reflects similar situations. I am will try to quote in
spanish, I find no rhyme in an english translation:
En este mundo traidor,
nada es verdad ni es mentira
todo sera del color
del cristal con que se mira
Think positive !!
73 de Jose, CO2JA @ CO2JA.#HAV.CUB.NA
Linux 2.0.36, FBB 7.00g25, JNOS 1.11c, AWZNode 0.3b
---
Ing. Jose A. Amador | Telf: (537) 20-7814
Depto de Telecomunicaciones | E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ISPJAE |
