Folks, Its me again, and I'm afraid I'm suffering from insomnia, and in a 'Devil's Advocate mood', so read (or just delete if the mood suits you) the following with a grain of salt.
It seems to me that perhaps simplification could be of some benefit, in short your various discussions are trying to 'boil the ocean'. You're trying to solve 3 separate problems (really 4, but the 4th is a subset of one of the others). In no particular order: You want to identify stations (and I'm hoping modes) in a way that all will be able to understand, the least common denominator solution as already pointed out would be to use CW (or perhaps voice depending on the bandwidth of the mode in use). It would be beneficial if not only the station id was sent, but also some sort of mode designator as well. For those that don't know Morse Code (and likely to be operating digital modes), this would almost always be machine sent, and fairly trivial for the machine to decode. For those who may be operating without a computer (gasp, yes there are some out there), they likely are either fluent in morse, or would be running voice, in which case they would never hear the narrow digital modes, if a mixed voice / digital / bandwidth band plan were adopted, voice id of the broader digital modes would suit these people as well as cw in the narrower bandwidth data portions of the band plan. Perhaps an important point here, is that the identification 'needs' to be done in a way that doesn't 'require' a computer to understand, but could be 'parsed' by a computer (at least in the case of non-voice CW based operation). Next up is the self policing monitoring issue, if we follow the above identification guidelines, we'll know both the 'who', and the mode. So what's left is to make it possible for the average ham with a desire to 'read the mail' to be able to do so. The soundcard modes and free distribution of the software, seems to solve this quite nicely. The real fly in the ointment, is the existing 'standardized' infrastructure, which is largely based on PACTOR I, II, and III. While it's no great burden to decode PACTOR I (lots of surplus tnc's have this capabiility, as well as a linux based soundcard solution). The fact remains that it is a big financial burden to decode PACTOR II and III, and our own organization is pushing this as the preferred solution. Perhaps this was understandable back in the pre-soundcard mode days, but I would say that with all the work done on digital modes that don't require a large single use proprietary hardware expense, its seriously time to make a 'course correction'. We should suggest in the strongest terms that our 'standard' infrastructure not be based on proprietary hardware, and should hold our own organization to task to make that change happen. I wonder if the Winlink2000 crowd wouldn't do themselves a great service by abandoning PACTOR for a mode that anyone with a computer could decipher. How much of the resistance in the ham community is because it is seen as an 'exclusive' club for those with the dedicated hardware as a requirement for membership. One might also wonder if they might not have a larger support and user base, if anyone could 'play' without joining the '$1,000 club'. Next up, is the QRM issue, I'd like to separate it from the automated response station issue, at least to start with (remember simplify...). As has already been pointed out, numerous times, the solution to QRM is for both ends to 'listen', if we can accept that call initiation (just like id'ing) is done in CW or voice depending on bandwidth (again, the least common denominators), then checking if a frequency is in use, can be done the same way it has been done for over 70 years... can't it? Remember, you don't have to be a daemon (pun intended for the unix crowd out there) cw operator to understand a simple QRL exchange, and if you're running a digital mode, it would again be fairly trivial for your software to hide the 'pain' of CW from you by completely automating it for you. Ok, now I've set the stage for automated station operation question, we have a utopian world where everyone can identify the id and digital mode being used, we have open standards for the modes (largely to placate the anti-WInlink2000 crowd, i.e. no more PACTOR II and III), and we have an automated (from the individual digital mode operator point of view) method for 'listening' for QRM, which can be interacted with by all operators, even those that aren't running a digital mode. What's left is to automate the operational aspect of the 'robot' station. Given what we've already got, it would seem that should also be fairly trivial, once proven to work, it's likely that such an automated robotic station would be more 'polite' than human operated stations, because it would not have the luxury, of ignoring that it had 'listened' to the best of the stations ability to ensure the frequency was free. Ok, what I've proposed is somewhat of a compromise for all concerned, but once we've gotten this far, what have we gained? I would submit, that we have cleared the way for a bandwidth usage based band plan... the really hard part would be getting the whole world to agree on that one, but we could at least set the stage for it to happen. In fact, it is entirely possible that we wouldn't even need it, our utopian world might function just fine, if our respective governments left it up entirely to our own 'gentle-persons' agreements, and simply removed all restrictions (band plan related anyway) entirely. Well, if nothing else, I may have discovered the cure for insomnia... funny how calming utopian dreams can be ;-) 73, Erik KI4HMS/7 On Feb 24, 2006, at 9:04 PM, Dave Bernstein wrote: > As I said, John, I'd be comfortable with RTTY stations continuing to > identify in RTTY. Thus the modified proposal is > > "All digital mode stations must identify in CW at the beginning of > each N minute interval of operation; RTTY stations may instead > identify in RTTY". > > 73, > > Dave, AA6YQ Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
