Hi Tomi.
> I tried to keep my hands out of this but... :-)
>>> Just put GB50BO in the callsign field...
>> Thereby contravening the regulations in just about EVERY country
>> I've ever operated in! Certainly, doing that is against the
>> British regulations, the US regulations, the Canadian
>> regulations, the French regulations...should I keep going?
> If my interpretation of the Finnish regulations is correct,
> there really isn't anything that says that the AX.25 source and
> destination addresses need to be valid callsigns.
Would I be wrong in assuming that the Finnish regulations require hams
to obey the law of the land, and that Finland also has an equivalent
of the UK's Fraud Act, as per my reply of about five minutes ago on
this subject?
> As long as you make clear what your real callsign is at least
> every 15 minutes. Just like on phone, you don't need to say the
> callsigns on every over, it's quite ok to go "ok Riley, perfect
> copy here in Helsinki, thanks for the report, yours is..."
Agreed, and that's pretty much standard operating procedure. However,
that's not what was suggested - an equivalent to the suggestion would
be for W1AWA to say "Hello, this is W1AW calling", and I would doubt
that such would be accepted anywhere...
> Anyway I do agree that valid callsigns should be used as AX.25
> addresses, and here it _is_ considered very bad practise to use
> anything else...
It's also considered bad practice here, but that in itself isn't the
problem.
>>> But those celebration-callsigns are IMHO rare and therefore
>>> a minor "problem" :-)
>> You obviously make little use of amateur radio then.
> My question is: Is it _really_ necessary for a special event
> station to be able to use the special callsign on packet radio?
> Do people want to send for example QSL cards for packet radio
> QSOs? Isn't that sort of stupid?
Not really.
However, it sidesteps the real problem, which is that the ITU-R
regulations that govern callsigns do NOT limit callsigns to six
characters, as it does not restrict the suffix to three characters.
That is why the UK government can and does issue longer callsigns to
special event stations. True, the actual format of the callsigns is
dictated by the ITU-R regulations, but the suffix is defined as "one
or more letters".
> Here in Finland we don't have the problem though as our TAC
> refuses to give callsigns that don't comply with the
> IARU/ITU/whatever recemmendations. Special event stations get
> either a single letter suffix or occasinally a special prefix
> (we have OF-OJ).
>>> And this only for GB50BOB?
>> Since you clearly don't use the amateur radio bands, you equally
>> clearly won't be aware of just how many callsigns are in regular
>> use that can not be used in the AX.25 protocol due to this
>> stupid flaw in the protocol.
> IMNSHO that callsign and other similar are as much illegal or at
> least against established practises as Walters proposal so those
> special event stations get what they have coming...
Walter's proposal it just plain illegal and easy to prove as such, but
that callsign, and all the others I quoted, complies with the ITU-R
regulations. I'm not the first to note this flaw in the AX.25
protocol, and I doubt I'll be the last either.
> In some future link layer protocol that fixes many other things
> as well this issue should be taken into account. For now I don't
> see the big problem. And whatever people do, don't create a
> quick and dirty, almost-but-not-quite backwards compatible hack
> to AX.25 to get around this "problem"...
>> Add to that the fact that several countries have already
>> proposed allocating ham callsigns with a four letter suffix
>> since they are fast running out of callsigns to allocate, and
>> you soon see just how daft your comments are...
> Really? What countries?
My understanding is that both Spain and Greece have stated that they
expect to run out of callsigns with three letter suffixes by 2002, and
that they propose to issue callsigns with four letter suffixes unless
additional prefixes are made available. I also understand that the USA
has indicated that it is running short of callsigns to issue as well,
although they have not indicated that they will follow the same
course.
Best wishes from Riley.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux |
| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
* ftp://ftp.MemAlpha.cx/pub/rhw/Linux
* http://www.MemAlpha.cx/kernel.versions.html
