re "The Winmor implementation in PaclinkW (much to the dismay of the
naysayers) has busy channel transmit control enabled."
I and others strongly encouraged Rick KN6KB to provide a busy frequency
detector in SCAMP. We were optimistic when he agreed to give it a shot, and
thrilled by the effectiveness demonstrated during the SCAMP beta; even Rick
was surprised by the results. When SCAMP disappeared and WinLink failed to
upgrade its PMBOs with the SCAMP busy frequency detector, cynicism returned.
Many concluded that the WinLink organization simply prefers to keep "its"
PMBO frequencies clear by QRMing "trespassers", rather than having to wait
for the frequency to become available.
WinMor's inclusion of a busy frequency detector -- hopefully one at least as
effective as Scamp's -- is excellent. No knowledgeable amateur radio
operator should be dismayed by this, though no one will declare victory
until WinLink PMBOs stop QRMing ongoing QSOs -- either because they've been
augmented with busy frequency detectors, or replaced by new servers that
include busy frequency detection.
73,
Dave, AA6YQ
-----Original Message-----
From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on
Behalf Of David Little
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 10:03 PM
To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [digitalradio] No FCC data bandwidth limit on HF Re: USA ham
rules
Rick,
I am excited about Winmor. I have been alpha testing PaclinkW, which
incorporates Winmor, Packet, Pactor and Telnet.
It provides rig control, accepts email from and ports email to Outlook or
Outlook Express.
The Winmor implementation in PaclinkW (much to the dismay of the naysayers)
has busy channel transmit control enabled.
I hope that the developer will start allowing connects in the near future.
His decision to incorporate Trellis Coded Modulation, to me, seems a very
good way to increase accuracy without sacrificing speed.
I know it put US Robotics head and shoulders above the competition with 9600
bps in a 300 bps world.
I had 3 of the USR HST Dual Standard modems when they were retailing at over
$1100.00 each, and used them on a 5 node, 4 line dial up BBS with a gigabyte
of storage in the late 1980s.
I had to do battle with the telco, trying to convince them that dial-up
could, in fact, support speeds above 300 BPS. Each Monday for over a year,
I wrote to a different commissioner of the Georgia Public Service Commission
until I got them to persuade the telco to replace a 1940s vintage switch
with something from the previous decade. I finally succeeded. The switch
(which was designed to service an Aircraft Carrier) was finally replaced
with something designed for residential use. It was a long hard battle, but
worth it in the long run. We face some of the same challenges today in the
RF Digital arena.
I don't think there is a limitation on Amateur radio for certain sound card
modes. I believe the limitation is in acceptance of the bandwidth necessary
to serve up email that is formatted and compressed.
You may be better able to accept what I am saying if you look at the concept
of horizontal and vertical chain of command and provision of service. For
Ham to Ham, it is a horizontal plane. For Ham to served agency, it is more
vertical. When you factor in NIMS, it gets much more specific. Where a
text message that does not contain critical amounts, numbers, quantities,
order amounts, audit info, etc... BPSK, RTTY, any of the non ARQ modes are
fine; it is not critical info.
For an IS-213 working through the system from request to supply to delivery,
the ability to send compressed binary info in a formatted package requires a
more serious protocol, with absolute error correction that doesn't rely on
redundancy ( and the resulting decreased through put ) to get the info
through.
It takes a well planned and implemented transport layer to move that through
the system, from RF to Internet and back to RF where internet infrastructure
is damaged.
I believe that Winmor may bring the sound card into this arena and make this
a reality in a very cost efficient package. Perhaps this will attract more
folks to give it a try, but it will always be greeted by some in the Amateur
Radio Service as "Automated" and "Common Carrier"; even if it saves their
Mother's life. This has more to do with being pragmatic than the complexity
of the transport layer or protocol. That is the real downside of the entire
discussion.
We are seeing the stage set for a real battle in the economic universe for
superiority of the world exchange choice. It was looking like the battle
for the Dollar against the Euro would exert pressure from Governmental
entities sole-sourcing the Pactor III protocol, with the revenue ultimately
going to the Euro. With China and Russia loosing their appetite for
American Debt, along with Opec willing to do anything possible to
destabilize the American Dollar, the lines are being drawn.. Currently, it
doesn't look good for the home team. If the IMF becomes involved, any
traction that was being built against Pactor III as an off-shore provider
will be lost in the slippery slope of world economic domination. Pactor may
or may not die in the process, but I am afraid the process will render that
a moot point that is of little consequence to any of with the other
adversities we will be facing.
On the MARS circuit, as well as SHARES, mixed mode nets are the norm.
Traffic can be sent by MT-63 and acknowledged by voice, or digital. Fills
can be requested and sent digitally, with the net reverting back to voice;
and this turnover may happen many times each hour of operation. Bandwidth
choice is only limited by conditions, distances, time of day, band and
distance to deliver. I don't consider MARS to be any majority as far as a
subset of Amateur Radio operators go. Army MARS has about 2700 members, and
will be requiring NIMS compliance from it's members by 2010. IS 100,200,700
and 800 at a minimum, and the suggestion of IS802 to better understand what
ESF2 is in the National Response Framework. Being able to directly
interface with all major governmental entities or infrastructure providers
is a very powerful tool, when it comes to getting traffic from one place to
another; even if it is only to track deployment teams and assure their safe
arrival or shadow their motion from one site to another. NTIA spectrum will
be the long-haul backbone of RF communications by volunteer communicators.
They have accepted the concept of wide bandwidth protocols, as they are
already guarding every 3 KHz slice of their spectrum. A 2 KHz bandwidth
mode still provides a guard band of 500 HZ on the top and bottom and still
stays within the 3 KHz that is designated as a "Channel". With each
assigned frequency, there is an USB and LSB choice, except when it caused
the data to migrate into the Amateur band edges. It is actually well
thought out. Why would a served agency want to rely on a communications
provider that can't stop arguing long enough to move the traffic?
I am in and out of this group as the tide tosses and turns, hoping to see
some acceptance of the way things are going to be. I am still optimistic.
In the mean time, I am still hedging my bets, and utilizing the spectrum
that is available to me to explore new and better ways of getting the job
done.
As an aside, if you really want to see something that is slick, give Easy
Pal a shot for sending text. Also ultra high resolution pictures with no
scan lines that occupy 20KB of data on each end. 90 seconds to send or
receive, with the ability to only request the individual blocks that weren't
received properly to be sent again. We are also utilizing it in MARS.
As I said, I am still optimistic,
David
KD4NUE
-----Original Message-----
From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Rick W
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:09 PM
To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [digitalradio] No FCC data bandwidth limit on HF Re: USA ham
rules
David,
The thing that I find particularly attractive about WINMOR is that it is
an open sound card protocol and it can be used in three forms:
200 Hz, 500 Hz, and 2000 Hz modes. Putting this capability together with
its automatic adaptibility for conditions, it may be the break though of
the year for e-mail messaging. It will not require user knowledge of
error correction and FEC, etc., since that will be done automatically,
just like it was for the SCAMP mode a number of years ago.
What it may not have is the emergency features that I see in PSKmail
which is peer to peer messaging and chat along with ad hoc server
deployment which can never be possible with Winlink 2000.
Put the right protocol with the right solutions and you have a fantastic
synergy not possible with any other protocol.
I don't think that many of us can agree with you about new sound card
modes not having a future on ham radio unless they are of a certain
type. They just have to be the right protocol that solves an actual need.
60 meters is off the table at this point since you can not even use
emergency data modes on those frequencies.
What may die is Pactor modes. Having one protocol sourced by one foreign
entity is not a good thing. Open source solutions are a good thing.
Will many hams use and actually practice using NBEMS? Thus far I have
had no luck in my local and regional area. But then again, I can not
even get the NTS folks to consider digital messaging other than Pactor,
HI.
I don't have any interest in NTIA and no one in our area is much
involved with non amateur emergency traffic. I suspect that many areas
have the same situation.
But I appreciate your comments and they are important issues to discuss.
73,
Rick, KV9U
Moderator, HFDEC (Hams for Disaster and Emergency Communications)
yahoogroup
David Little wrote:
> Skip,
>
> I use FLARQ and FLDigi on the FT-2000 Data Management Unit, when I
> boot it from Linux.
>
> It allows me to do digital modes without an external computer. The
> DMU also is networked via Ethernet.
>
> I was looking at MT-63 2K with FLARQ when WINMOR was announced, but
> since it was a 2K wide protocol, I never gave it any more
> consideration, as it would just be treated as the same annoyance, just
> with different tonal qualities.
>
> Winlink has no future on Amateur radio spectrum.
>
> Anything more complex than RTTY or BPSK has little future on Amateur
> spectrum.
>
> Other than a small core of folks willing to take the time to learn
> something about ARQ, FEC, redundancy, error correction, and what makes
> up a dependable transport layer - There is little future of any
> digital mode with the complexity necessary to be efficient in times of
> need.
>
> I do wish you well. I applaud what you are doing, but you are playing
> to a hostile crowd if you expect to deploy any digital mode more
> complex than RTTY or PSK on the Amateur Radio Spectrum. No matter
> what it is, what it sounds like, what it carries, where it is going,
> or where it came from; it is "Automated" or "Common Carrier" traffic.
> Even the legitimate traffic on frequencies that amateur radio is the
> secondary user of; same thing; always "automated" or "common
> carrier". A very intelligent mantra, often used to describe
> legitimate traffic by the primary users.
>
> The Common Carrier and Automated crowd are really having a hard time
> dealing with 60m, and the majority of them haven't been able to find
> it yet....
>
> As I have stated before, I will use the amateur spectrum to do the
> radio checks, and the NTIA spectrum to move the traffic.
>
> At present, I can handle the entire County EOC with one rig and
> antenna, while having another rig and antenna devoted to Voice
> operations. We have both Pactor III and Sound Card modes there,
> multiple rigs, multiple antennas and in the same room as the 911
> operators and dispatchers. the EOC is a 5 second walk away in the
> same building, and I can run much of the station remotely from a VPN
> within the EOC complex.
>
> We have similar stations, with similar capabilities purchased for the
> 2 hospitals.
>
> I have a similar (only better) station at home; currently minus Pactor
> III, which I sold my SCS gear last year in anticipation of WINMOR. If
> I can pick up another SCS controller reasonable, I will add it back
> into my portable kit.
>
> We will have communications with the Air National Guard that will
> handle distribution to the POD sites, as well as the NECN (National
> Emergency Communications Network) which will give direct contact with
> FEMA, the State EMA and all the alphabet soup entities. Outside of
> that, traffic can be moved via voice on SHARES to the same entities,
> then by voice or digital on the MARS circuit, and locally via VHF to
> the amateur frequencies. We have licensed County police radio cars,
> as well as portable VHF stations with antenna launching kits to help
> with the local stuff until we can get the local amateur volunteers to
> relieve them to allow them to return to patrol. The County Police
> Chief, EMA Manager and EOC staff are all on board, and have funded the
> EOC station out of county funds. We are in the process of further
> training to merge their method of operations into the rules governing
> the amateur radio license that they must hold to operate one of the
> vhf stations. Out of the 50 we licensed last year, some are moving
> toward general. I also work with 2 TSA Hurricane Coast Airports in
> 2 states, where some of their employees have elected to get amateur
> licenses and join the MARS program.
>
> All the important traffic will be moved in binary format, properly
> formatted on NTIA spectrum.
>
> There is no common carrier or automated when it comes to NTIA
> spectrum. They are pretty much beyond that, and tend to concentrate
> on draining the swamp.
>
> I tried it on the Amateur spectrum, and found the alligators to be too
> much of a distraction.
>
> Again, I do applaud you efforts and really wish you the best. For the
> meantime, I will be working with the transport layer that is already
> in place, on spectrum that allows it to be utilized.
>
> If the Amateur community embraces NBEMS, we will add that
> compatibility into the setup.
>
> David
> KD4NUE
>
>
>
