For a long time already my choice has been (as a packet sysop) to send the info in the most compact way possible, and operators should know how to proceed, because RF "bandwidth" (read it as both occupied spectrum and time of channel occupancy) is a limited resource, contrary to what is common nowadays for a xDSL or WLAN access to the Internet.
Some people might argue that "transparency" is of utmost importance, but it may lead to abuses and rendering useless a link perfectly suitable for more modest endeavours. You generally needn't worry about jpg's, gif's and maybe pdf's, but .doc, xls, bmp should be taboo without compression. Plain text might be preferable to .doc's, if reading the info using beautiful fonts might be an unaffordable luxury. One paragraph of text is almost 20 k as .doc, and a mere 1 kb as txt. Once I received a bmp file with a circuit, black lines over white background, 200 kb on packet at 1200 baud. The bmp was color, 24 bits. I processed it and reduced it to 16 colors, gray scale and encoded it as png. The resultant size was 3.2 kB !! It took one hour to get thru as bmp, and 3 minutes to be repaeted as B/W png, without any perceptible image degradation. Compression in any way is your friend. Zip is a portable format, as most OS's can handle such files properly, contrary to some other more "exotic" compression algorithms, that may be "better", but less generally known. And of course, I agree that the moment to take action is not the moment to start learning, you should have learned already before. Improvised "experiments" on a live emergency may lead to failure. Murphy lurks ! 73, Jose, CO2JA Rick wrote: > Maybe theoretically, but if you don't do this on a regular basis, doing > it first at the beginning of an emergency is just not a good time. I > would like to see this available for those of us who think it would be > VERY helpful. A good example is when someone asks for help with "xyz" > mode. If you could get on voice and talk him through it, like they do > with SSTV/FAX operation, we would really add a lot to improving our > digital experience. > > I still think that if you are sending text in digitized form, such as a > PDF, .doc file, maybe even a word processed "text" file, it should be > treated as a FAX and should be allowed on voice frequencies. > > Should I ask the FCC for clarification on this? Has anyone else ever > done this or know of anyone who has and was told no? > > 73, > > Rick, KV9U > > > > Andrew O'Brien wrote: >>> -Go for the changes and then lobby our Division Directors to get the >>> ARRL to accept some mixed mode/content areas, especially for emergency >>> use which is my main interest area. >>> >>> 73, >>> >>> Rick, KV9U >>> >>> >> Rick, can't we already do that "in an emergency" ? >> >> Andy K3UK __________________________________________ Participe en Universidad 2008. 11 al 15 de febrero del 2008. Palacio de las Convenciones, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba http://www.universidad2008.cu
