The root cause of the complaints can be traced to the way that Pactor III was introduced to the amateur bands. Most hams today consider the appropriate bandwidth of a signal in the RTTY/Data subbands to be 500 Hz. Wider bandwidth modes have been tolerated, but they typically are limited to one or two frequencies. MT63 is a good example. You did not find MT63 typically on more than 1 frequency per band, and you found that operators limited their bandwidth to 1000 Hz with the occasional foray to 2000 Hz. On 40 and 80 meters they limited their bandwidth to 500 Hz. m. The introduction of Pactor III into the amateur radio bands flew in the face of such tradition. It was used by a small number of users who unnecessarily spread out over the bands, and quite frankly pissed people off. Now the impression is that Pactor III users are spectrum grabbers. The main objection to the ARRL regulation by bandwidth petition was the fear that Pactor III would proliferate in what is now the phone bands. If PACTOR III had been deployed with constraint, I don't think you would find the angst that we have now against the mode. Even before PACTOR III, there was a bias against automatically controlled digital stations. I can remember this in the early 90s when APLINK was around. Many hams feel that QSO's should be between two humans, not a human and a machine. This bias against unattended operation was already present when Pactor III was introduced. Had the bandwidth used, been commensurate with the number is users I don't think PACTOR would have the poor reputation that it does today. Its really not a technical issue as much as it is a public relations issue. Why is there no SCS presence at Dayton and why is there not a Winlink or PACTOR forum at Dayton? The answer can be found in the way that unattended stations using Pactor were deployed. I am not sure what it will take to correct this, but the damage has been done.
>In the ARRL's defense, when they looked at WinLink at their Board >Meeting, there >was nothing else on the technology front that could do what WinLink >was doing. >And until PSKMail came out, there WAS NOTHING to equal WinLink.
