Joel, Amateur radio is changing quite a bit from my 40+ year perspective. Just under half of all U.S. hams are Technician class and many have no interest in upgrading to an HF license. But the main reason that hams don't buy a $300 TNC is because they don't have to buy one.
Contrary to the absurd comments you hear about hams being cheap, the fact is that many of us will spend fairly sizable amounts of money over the long term. Some spend amazingly large sums. If digital modes required a $300 TNC, many of us would have them. But such equipment is not needed for most digital operating. The older hardware is not even as good as much of the software now. The only exception being Pactor II and III. This past weekend, I was at our "local," but very small swapmeet. I think you can get some idea of where hams are at in their interests and what is important to them from watching what they buy or don't buy. Including me, there were 4 indoor and two outdoor sellers. One guy had R/C cars and some old movie videos at the table on one side of me. Another had some tubes and a few ham related items and he came from about 100 miles away and makes the rounds of swapmeets. Then the guy to the other side of me comes every year with the same very old test equipment that no one wants to buy. He did have a AEA CP-1 which no one had any interest in. (It may have been my old one as I was one of the earliest adopters of this type of hardware. Because of possible future local interest by a few of us involved in emergency communicationse I had a slight interest in an old MFJ 1270 packet TNC. I offered him $10 and later upped it to $15, but he would not accept such a low price and took it home, even though we both know that he will never use it again considering how many years it has be unused. He pointed out that he had bought this TNC used for $75 a decade or so ago. And the ham he bought it from was ... me! I did not even recall I had sold the TNC to him as it may have been 15 years ago, which goes to show you how long it has been since VHF packet networking was a viable activity in our area. Talk about changes! Only one other ham bought anything computer related and he had two 500 MHz Pentiums with 64 meg RAM. Price = Free. There were no takers. That tells you that most hams have a lot more advanced computer and that is where they spent a big part of what would have been their ham hardware buget for some kind of TNC box. 73, Rick, KV9U Joel Kolstad wrote: >If Pactor, packet Amtor, etc. all died because of the need for a $300 TNC, >I think amateur radio as a hobby really is dying! $300 in today's money is >nothing compared to what many amateurs paid for their HF rigs years ago. > > 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/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> 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/
