Because the SCS modem works so well, and except for HAL, no other manufacturers developed any competitive systems. Also, there has been minimal interest from the programmers in the amateur radio community to move forward with competitive sound card modes.
So for now there is SCS as a proprietary, one source product. Winlink 2000 dropped Clover II support some time back and concentrated only upon Pactor. So if you want to use the HF portion of the Winlink 2000 system, you either use Pactor 1 from a new or used cloned product, (e.g., Kantronics or AEA/Timewave), or you buy the SCS product. Pactor 1 is not fully supported with all the servers and there are time limits from what I understand. For me it is not the price. I simply will not support this kind of approach in amateur radio as I believe that these systems are contrary to what amateur radio is all about. Closed systems with proprietary designs are anathema to me. But others see it differently and will use the system mostly for casual use, such as RV and boating. Some even extend that to emergency communications, but again, that is a stretch for most of us, because it doesn't solve the main emergency needs that we have. And it is a fragile system, dependent heavily on the internet. From comments I have heard there was a recent outage for a short time. Nothing is perfect. Even HF can lose communication due to aurora, bands going out, etc. Recently, our Section has most of the hospitals set up with at least a dual band VHF/UHF antenna, feedline, and power supply. Some have hams on staff and even have used some of the various funding sources to purchase dual band rigs. Yesterday, one of our nearby hospitals that just became well equipped for amateur radio, experienced a failure of cellphones and long distance. The radio amateur operator, who is also a hospital employee, luckily had their plan B backup which was a satellite phone. You really don't need amateur radio with all these other high tech solutions ... right? Except, of course, if the satphone system doesn't work. And it did not work! Quite a shock. Luckily, he was able to get help via amateur radio and make the necessary communications to find out what was going on with the cell phones (cut fiber optic cable) and if necessary we could have mobilized further. Communications were eventually restored about 12 hours from the time the outage was discovered (about 2 am to 2 pm if I have it roughly correct). Satphone system was apparently undergoing some additions to the constellation and was temporarily down or acting intermittently. 73, Rick, KV9U kd4e wrote: >One of the three vulnerable legs of SCS has been >clarified as not as vulnerable as thought and subject >to "MacGuyver" makeshift redundancy. > >However, SCS still retains a pair of rare, costly, and >vulnerable elements - proprietary SCS hardware and SCS >software. Nice to have in the mix, if one can spare >the precious cash from the budget, but not on what one >wants to hang one's entire disaster communications hat! > >It would appear that Winlink2000 is a different >kettle of fish, dependent on one or more of the >proprietary, costly, big-hardware dependent, and >problem-plagued MS versions of windows. > >A poor choice for field deployment, though another >optional tool. Not a robustly redundant tool due to >hardware and software dependencies. > >We have to be able to do better! > >IMHO, YMMV ... > > >
