RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
Howard, I am a member of Army MARS in the state of Georgia. Actually, I should say Region 4 MARS, as we are now under the Region concept and are merging into a Tri-Service organization. So far, AF MARS has completely revamped their call-sign structure to adhere to FEMA Region numbers. and all Navy/Marine Corps guys are Zeros. Don't ask me why the zeros are leading the pack; they seem to be immune to change. David KD4NUE -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of W6IDS Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 12:17 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS David, I didn't see what MARS program you're affiliated with. Interesting read. Howard W6IDS Richmond, IN EM79 - Original Message - From: David mailto:dalit...@bellsouth.net Little To: digitalradio@ mailto:digitalradio@yahoogroups.com yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 11:23 AM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS Andy, At leas one of our members has been in touch with the developer and made requests to simplify the cut and paste options of the text transfer. There have been numerous updates, and the text transfer has been updated to make it more adaptable for use to insert blocks of text for broadcast.
Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
David Little wrote: Howard, I am a member of Army MARS in the state of Georgia. Actually, I should say Region 4 MARS, as we are now under the Region concept and are merging into a Tri-Service organization. So far, AF MARS has completely revamped their call-sign structure to adhere to FEMA Region numbers. and all Navy/Marine Corps guys are Zeros. Don't ask me why the zeros are leading the pack; they seem to be immune to change. David KD4NUE Navy / Marine Corps *callsigns* generally use a zero as the digit... but that's just the callsign. Most Navy MARS callsigns don't indicate anything about the station's location. The organizational structure, though. shifted to the same as FEMA several years ago. I know of several Navy stations here in Region Five that have experimented with Easypal... 73, Paul / K9PS / NNN0___
RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
Paul, Glad to hear Navy is giving it a try. The rest is grossly off-topic, but I feel the need to expand my understanding. On the Zero, it is a sore point across services, as is the full call debacle on initial check in that I believe came from Bo's influence. I can declare abbreviated calls are authorized, before I establish ANCS, and take 5 to 8 check ins per minute with out duplicate transmissions. In many cases, using abbreviated calls, I can get an entire working net of about 20 stations, establish ANCS, make the call for emergency or priority traffic, have ANCS make the same call, and have 54 minutes for training, administrative business or emergency net operation. Since we have to use full phonetics (Our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we never fall back to Abbreviated Call Signs (Our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we never give a call sign non-phonetically (our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we use FEMA Region designators to be able to geographically determine the effectiveness of the net (our prefixes are more complex than NNN0) We find that the attempt to require full call signs on initial check in to be a surefire way to create Chaos. Also, in preferring the concept of training the way we would operate in an emergency, we have generally found that requiring full calls to NCS, when the net can only have ONE NCS is as well thought out as being asked if we want fries with our fries, when we just order fries. One day, I may be fully expanded enough in mind and maturity to fully understand the full call requirement. I'll bet you guys are still laughing about that part of the new voice SOP. Bravo Zulu, David KD4NUE / AAM4__ -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul L Schmidt, K9PS Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 7:26 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS David Little wrote: Howard, I am a member of Army MARS in the state of Georgia. Actually, I should say Region 4 MARS, as we are now under the Region concept and are merging into a Tri-Service organization. So far, AF MARS has completely revamped their call-sign structure to adhere to FEMA Region numbers. and all Navy/Marine Corps guys are Zeros. Don't ask me why the zeros are leading the pack; they seem to be immune to change. David KD4NUE Navy / Marine Corps *callsigns* generally use a zero as the digit... but that's just the callsign. Most Navy MARS callsigns don't indicate anything about the station's location. The organizational structure, though. shifted to the same as FEMA several years ago. I know of several Navy stations here in Region Five that have experimented with Easypal... 73, Paul / K9PS / NNN0___
Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
I liked it better back in the early 1960's when I was in Navy MARS with the call N0YUI. Of course, today that has been reissued as a ham call. HI 73, Rick, KV9U David Little wrote: Paul, Glad to hear Navy is giving it a try. The rest is grossly off-topic, but I feel the need to expand my understanding. On the Zero, it is a sore point across services, as is the full call debacle on initial check in that I believe came from Bo's influence. I can declare abbreviated calls are authorized, before I establish ANCS, and take 5 to 8 check ins per minute with out duplicate transmissions. In many cases, using abbreviated calls, I can get an entire working net of about 20 stations, establish ANCS, make the call for emergency or priority traffic, have ANCS make the same call, and have 54 minutes for training, administrative business or emergency net operation. Since we have to use full phonetics (Our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we never fall back to Abbreviated Call Signs (Our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we never give a call sign non-phonetically (our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we use FEMA Region designators to be able to geographically determine the effectiveness of the net (our prefixes are more complex than NNN0) We find that the attempt to require full call signs on initial check in to be a surefire way to create Chaos. Also, in preferring the concept of training the way we would operate in an emergency, we have generally found that requiring full calls to NCS, when the net can only have ONE NCS is as well thought out as being asked if we want fries with our fries, when we just order fries. One day, I may be fully expanded enough in mind and maturity to fully understand the full call requirement. I'll bet you guys are still laughing about that part of the new voice SOP. Bravo Zulu, David KD4NUE / AAM4__
Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
Was AE1AE in 1967; the AMATEUR call that came from was DL4AE. Cortland KA5S [Original Message] From: Rick W mrf...@frontiernet.net To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Date: 3/28/2009 8:15:36 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS I liked it better back in the early 1960's when I was in Navy MARS with the call N0YUI. Of course, today that has been reissued as a ham call. HI 73, Rick, KV9U David Little wrote: Paul, Glad to hear Navy is giving it a try. The rest is grossly off-topic, but I feel the need to expand my understanding. On the Zero, it is a sore point across services, as is the full call debacle on initial check in that I believe came from Bo's influence. I can declare abbreviated calls are authorized, before I establish ANCS, and take 5 to 8 check ins per minute with out duplicate transmissions. In many cases, using abbreviated calls, I can get an entire working net of about 20 stations, establish ANCS, make the call for emergency or priority traffic, have ANCS make the same call, and have 54 minutes for training, administrative business or emergency net operation. Since we have to use full phonetics (Our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we never fall back to Abbreviated Call Signs (Our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we never give a call sign non-phonetically (our prefixes are more complex than NNN), and we use FEMA Region designators to be able to geographically determine the effectiveness of the net (our prefixes are more complex than NNN0) We find that the attempt to require full call signs on initial check in to be a surefire way to create Chaos. Also, in preferring the concept of training the way we would operate in an emergency, we have generally found that requiring full calls to NCS, when the net can only have ONE NCS is as well thought out as being asked if we want fries with our fries, when we just order fries. One day, I may be fully expanded enough in mind and maturity to fully understand the full call requirement. I'll bet you guys are still laughing about that part of the new voice SOP. Bravo Zulu, David KD4NUE / AAM4__ Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/sked Recommended software: Winwarbler, FLDIGI, DM780, or Multipsk Yahoo! Groups Links --- Text inserted by Panda IS 2009: This message has NOT been classified as spam. If it is unsolicited mail (spam), click on the following link to reclassify it: http://localhost:6083/Panda?ID=pav_5560SPAM=truepath=C:\Documents%20and%20 Settings\Owner\Local%20Settings\Application%20Data\Panda%20Security\Panda%20 Internet%20Security%202009\AntiSpam ---
Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
Although Easypal is currently the primary digital SSTV program , it also can be used to transmit any kind of data. A very experienced digital ham took me to task a while back for making this claim since he understood it to always compress data with a lossy characteristic and could not be used for something that could not tolerate any loss. Of course he did not realize that the program provides for both kinds of data. The current digital SSTV programs moved hams (almost overnight) from RDFT to what must be DRM QAM and seems to be the most successful scheme for the minimum speed needed for a reasonable time in transmitting images of the size and resolution that has become common. In fact, as I was writing this, the SSTV group on 7.173, which is very active here in the U.S., was sending a text message in the past minute or so, discussing the coming April Fool's computer virus. Ironically, they are probably operating illegally since text data is not legal to send on the phone/image portions of the bands. But then again maybe it can be called a Fax transmission? If that is true though, then why could not any other multitone digital mode be considered fax? Why not a two tone mode? Why not a single tone mode? 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: - 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 David, I am interested to learn of this. Rick , myself , and several others in this group played around with EasyPal a year or so ago, we also thought it had interesting uses for file transfers. How it are MARS folks accepting EasyPal? Andy K3UK
RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
Andy, At leas one of our members has been in touch with the developer and made requests to simplify the cut and paste options of the text transfer. There have been numerous updates, and the text transfer has been updated to make it more adaptable for use to insert blocks of text for broadcast. All the other functions of the BSR and FIX apply to the text function. If you were tasked with sending the participants of a net a rather intricate set of instructions, taskings, or specifications, and had to be sure each member had received it properly, you could spend a major part of an hour with requests for fills or repetitions, words phonetically, groups, or numbers. With easypal, you get what you get on the original transmission, and you send the BSR (Bad Segment Request) and the sending station sends the FIX file containing only those segments. Each member receives benefit of any bad block that they missed in a FIX file sent to another member, since it is a broadcast (non-connected) protocol. If you were involved in dial-up file transfer in the 80s, when text files were captured you will remember that it took as much time to capture a space as it did a letter. Transfer protocols were created the compressed ASCII on the fly to improve through put, I seem to remember J-modem, I-modem, y-modem and others that had the compression routines built in. I remember using a shell on ProComm Plus to allow choosing up to 14 different transfer protocols, dependent on the type of file you were transferring. I had at least 9 options available on the BBS I ran from the late 80s to the mid 90s. If Easypal can send a perfect high resolution picture in a 20K Wave file, you can imagine how small a 2 page document would be when converted to binary, data digitized into a wave file then sent in this manner to assure error-free reception. The repeater function allows the file to be sent to a central repository then retrieved individually by the members who could retrieve the file list. The program is getting very polished, and has great potential. I don't know if it is getting much exposure in all regions, but it is a valuable tool for the toolbox. As far as acceptance, MARS is a fairly diverse group of folks. Some are up in age, some are retired and homebound, some are fit and ready for deployment at the drop of a hat. Since there are requirements for continued membership, participation requirements, reporting requirements, requirements for pulling NCS and ANCS, requirements for NIMS compliance, now the requirement for a General or higher license Then you can see that the members have to meet certain obligations and benchmarks to continue to be a member. With this in mind, the program has some fairly receptive members, who wanted to go further in their service in, and understanding of the art of communications.. Most of them are quite willing to try something new. We haven't spent the degree of time on Easypal as we have with MT-63. But with each region having up to 10 one hour long nets scheduled each day, and each net has the requirement for some sort of training, and many members are uniquely qualified in one aspect of the training or another, it becomes fairly easy to see how a new mode can be introduced, explained, setup and operation help given, and results seen within the course of an hour and in an interactive manner in a disciplined net structure. Is MARS the silver bullet? Hardly. It has it's growing pains as much as any organization. In Amateur Radio, if there is a community that has 3 Amateur Radio operators, there will be 4 opinions on every subject and pretty soon there will be the need for 5 repeaters to be established so they can communicate with their group. We all can key the Mic, but many times, as communicators we show that we can send out a signal, but actual communication is not often what results. The organized format of MARS, the requirements, continuous training, forward looking (not driving the car by only looking through the rear-view mirror), the disciplined net structure. All of these things help form a group that is dedicated to the art of emergency communications. Once that subset is created, most of the QRM is left behind, and they can concentrate on the task at hand. Overall, I am usually fairly happy to be associated with MARS. BTW, the General class or higher requirement was recently introduced, with the main purpose to allow interoperability with ARES, RACES and other Amateur radio groups. So we would sure like to see some organized effort for both groups to start working together. As usual, far more of an answer than you requested, but maybe some extra content slipped in that makes the big picture more visible. David KD4NUE -Original Message- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew O'Brien Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 12:01 AM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
The FCC rules are antiquated. Sending anything other than voice or image is illegal there if you use only one sideband. However, if you use both sidebands (B7W, B8W or B9W), any content is legal. 73, John KD6OZH - Original Message - From: Rick W To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 13:56 UTC Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS Although Easypal is currently the primary digital SSTV program , it also can be used to transmit any kind of data. A very experienced digital ham took me to task a while back for making this claim since he understood it to always compress data with a lossy characteristic and could not be used for something that could not tolerate any loss. Of course he did not realize that the program provides for both kinds of data. The current digital SSTV programs moved hams (almost overnight) from RDFT to what must be DRM QAM and seems to be the most successful scheme for the minimum speed needed for a reasonable time in transmitting images of the size and resolution that has become common. In fact, as I was writing this, the SSTV group on 7.173, which is very active here in the U.S., was sending a text message in the past minute or so, discussing the coming April Fool's computer virus. Ironically, they are probably operating illegally since text data is not legal to send on the phone/image portions of the bands. But then again maybe it can be called a Fax transmission? If that is true though, then why could not any other multitone digital mode be considered fax? Why not a two tone mode? Why not a single tone mode? 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: - 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 David, I am interested to learn of this. Rick , myself , and several others in this group played around with EasyPal a year or so ago, we also thought it had interesting uses for file transfers. How it are MARS folks accepting EasyPal? Andy K3UK
Re: [Fwd: Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS]
Les Keppie wrote: I have forwarded your email on to Erik VK4AES for information and got this reply Hi Les, Well, that is a surprise. I made a few changes from the MARS group requests, but never hear any reply to see if it is what they want. The missing FileOK in the waterfall is still a mystery. I have seen it miss on a few occasions but the code seems OK. Well it isn't, just that I cannot see why at present. It is probably some weird interaction in the most unexpected spot. Erik Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS From: David Little dalit...@bellsouth.net Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:23:03 -0400 To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Andy, At leas one of our members has been in touch with the developer and made requests to simplify the cut and paste options of the text transfer. There have been numerous updates, and the text transfer has been updated to make it more adaptable for use to insert blocks of text for broadcast. All the other functions of the BSR and FIX apply to the text function. If you were tasked with sending the participants of a net a rather intricate set of instructions, taskings, or specifications, and had to be sure each member had received it properly, you could spend a major part of an hour with requests for fills or repetitions, words phonetically, groups, or numbers. With easypal, you get what you get on the original transmission, and you send the BSR (Bad Segment Request) and the sending station sends the FIX file containing only those segments. Each member receives benefit of any bad block that they missed in a FIX file sent to another member, since it is a broadcast (non-connected) protocol. If you were involved in dial-up file transfer in the 80s, when text files were captured you will remember that it took as much time to capture a space as it did a letter. Transfer protocols were created the compressed ASCII on the fly to improve through put, I seem to remember J-modem, I-modem, y-modem and others that had the compression routines built in. I remember using a shell on ProComm Plus to allow choosing up to 14 different transfer protocols, dependent on the type of file you were transferring. I had at least 9 options available on the BBS I ran from the late 80s to the mid 90s. If Easypal can send a perfect high resolution picture in a 20K Wave file, you can imagine how small a 2 page document would be when converted to binary, data digitized into a wave file then sent in this manner to assure error-free reception. The repeater function allows the file to be sent to a central repository then retrieved individually by the members who could retrieve the file list. The program is getting very polished, and has great potential. I don't know if it is getting much exposure in all regions, but it is a valuable tool for the toolbox. As far as acceptance, MARS is a fairly diverse group of folks. Some are up in age, some are retired and homebound, some are fit and ready for deployment at the drop of a hat. Since there are requirements for continued membership, participation requirements, reporting requirements, requirements for pulling NCS and ANCS, requirements for NIMS compliance, now the requirement for a General or higher license Then you can see that the members have to meet certain obligations and benchmarks to continue to be a member. With this in mind, the program has some fairly receptive members, who wanted to go further in their service in, and understanding of the art of communications.. Most of them are quite willing to try something new. We haven't spent the degree of time on Easypal as we have with MT-63. But with each region having up to 10 one hour long nets scheduled each day, and each net has the requirement for some sort of training, and many members are uniquely qualified in one aspect of the training or another, it becomes fairly easy to see how a new mode can be introduced, explained, setup and operation help given, and results seen within the course of an hour and in an interactive manner in a disciplined net structure. Is MARS the silver bullet? Hardly. It has it's growing pains as much as any organization. In Amateur Radio, if there is a community that has 3 Amateur Radio operators, there will be 4 opinions on every subject and pretty soon there will be the need for 5 repeaters to be established so they can communicate with their group. We all can key the Mic, but many times, as communicators we show that we can send out a signal, but actual communication is not often what results. The organized format of MARS, the requirements, continuous training, forward looking (not driving the car by only looking through the rear-view mirror), the disciplined net structure. All of these things help form a group that is dedicated to the art of emergency
Re: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
MessageDavid, I didn't see what MARS program you're affiliated with. Interesting read. Howard W6IDS Richmond, IN EM79 - Original Message - From: David Little To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 11:23 AM Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS Andy, At leas one of our members has been in touch with the developer and made requests to simplify the cut and paste options of the text transfer. There have been numerous updates, and the text transfer has been updated to make it more adaptable for use to insert blocks of text for broadcast.
