I agree with Joe on this point. Amateur radio has always been self policing. How can we self police the Pactor operators, automatic or manually controlled, when even if we spend the big bucks to acquire a pactor modem, we can not monitor their transmissions? We can not even know whether the operator is even a ham.
Regards, Chuck AA5J At 03:41 PM 3/8/2007, Joe Ivey wrote: >I have yet to understand why the FCC allowed automatic stations on >the ham bands in the first place. I hate to see ham radio being used >as an internet email service that in 99% of the case the mail is not >related to ham radio. > >I think that 99% of the ham support handling emergency traffic and >would stay clear of any frequency that was being used for such a >purpose. A lot of people including hams do not really understand the >term "emergency traffic". Simply put it means the threat to life, >injury. and property. 99.99% of all emergencies are confined to a >general local area. It very rare that one needs to send traffic from >the west coast to the east coast or Washington DC. Ham radio serves >a great purpose in these cases and we as operators should help out >when we are needed. But for someone out in his boat just wanting to >check is email should not be allowed on the ham bands. > >My 2 cents worth. > >Joe >W4JSI
