Many years ago, Peter, TY1PS sent a compressed audio file from Benin to the USA and it could have been the first "digital" file of this type. This was done on Clover II since for a short time this was a popular digital mode with the Winlink system (not the same as the internet/ham radio interface Winlink 2000 system). It seems that someone did ask the FCC if this was legal, or if it was too much like broadcasing "music," and it seems that there were at least some views at the FCC that this might be legal to do since it was "data."
For those of you who were members of ADRS/IDRA prior to the collapse of both "organizations," Peter even made a clever program (TY1PS Express) that allowed two parties who had this same program to automatically send and display a thumbnail of themselves. Unfortunately, this was considered borderline "data" since it had an image and so this never got very far. In a few weeks, this techology will be legal here in the U.S. It only took, what, about 15 years? I firmly believe that the only reason that all of this crazy division ever occured between image and data was due to the idea that since "image" was a huge transfer of data, it required at least a phone bandwidth size pipeline and "data" data was mostly RTTY which used narrower BW's. But to me, all pictures are really only a subset of "data." Not some separate entity as the rules currently try and delineate. What really changed things was when digital "data" became extremely wide, e.g., MT-63 and Pactor 3. Once that was permitted to happen, it seems to me that any kind of data should have been allowed to be used on the non-phone "data" portions of the bands or else restrict that part of the bands to narrow modes only, such as a maximum of 500 Hz. Perhaps someday the FCC will address this situation with the bandwidth proposals? I sure hope so. The only rational approach would be to make the current "data" portions of the bands smaller (except for 80 meters where this has already been done), and only allow 500 Hz BW's in that area and then allow any mode or content in the phone/wide section. Anything else, just seems to make things unnecessarily (ridiculously?) complicated. The only other tweak would be to decide whether narrow band modes could operate in the wide band areas as does CW now in most cases (except for 60 meters). 73, Rick, KV9U Joe Veldhuis wrote: >If you sent a text file, that would be considered "data". As would, if I >understand correctly, essentially any other kind of file except one >containing some type of sound, image or video. > >An interesting question would be, what would an MP3 recording of a PSK31 >signal count as? > >-Joe, KD8ATU > >Andrew O'Brien wrote: > > >>I don't quite understand Mark's point about using "data" via something like >>WinDRM. What is "data"? WindDRM sends images and DV, when it us in receive >>mode and is decoding a picture it indicates it is receiving "data". I >>would not expect to be allowed to send a picture in the RTTY/DATA sub-bands. >> >> > > >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 > > > > > > > > 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/
