Les Keppie wrote:
I have forwarded your email on to Erik VK4AES for information
and got this reply
Hi Les,
Well, that is a surprise.
I made a few changes from the MARS group requests, but never hear any
reply to see if it is what they want.
The missing "FileOK" in the waterfall is still a mystery.
I have seen it miss on a few occasions but the code seems OK.
Well it isn't, just that I cannot see why at present.
It is probably some weird interaction in the most unexpected spot.
Erik
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject:
RE: [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
From:
"David Little" <dalit...@bellsouth.net>
Date:
Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:23:03 -0400
To:
<digitalradio@yahoogroups.com>
To:
<digitalradio@yahoogroups.com>
Andy,
At leas one of our members has been in touch with the developer and
made requests to simplify the cut and paste options of the text
transfer.
There have been numerous updates, and the text transfer has been
updated to make it more adaptable for use to insert blocks of text
for broadcast.
All the other functions of the BSR and FIX apply to the text function.
If you were tasked with sending the participants of a net a rather
intricate set of instructions, taskings, or specifications, and had to
be sure each member had received it properly, you could spend a major
part of an hour with requests for fills or repetitions, words
phonetically, groups, or numbers.
With easypal, you get what you get on the original transmission, and
you send the BSR (Bad Segment Request) and the sending station sends
the FIX file containing only those segments. Each member receives
benefit of any bad block that they missed in a FIX file sent to
another member, since it is a broadcast (non-connected) protocol.
If you were involved in dial-up file transfer in the 80s, when text
files were "captured" you will remember that it took as much time to
capture a space as it did a letter. Transfer protocols were created
the compressed ASCII on the fly to improve through put, I seem to
remember J-modem, I-modem, y-modem and others that had the compression
routines built in. I remember using a shell on ProComm Plus to allow
choosing up to 14 different transfer protocols, dependent on the type
of file you were transferring. I had at least 9 options available on
the BBS I ran from the late 80s to the mid 90s.
If Easypal can send a perfect high resolution picture in a 20K Wave
file, you can imagine how small a 2 page document would be when
converted to binary, data digitized into a wave file then sent in this
manner to assure error-free reception.
The repeater function allows the file to be sent to a central
repository then retrieved individually by the members who could
retrieve the file list.
The program is getting very polished, and has great potential.
I don't know if it is getting much exposure in all regions, but it is
a valuable tool for the toolbox.
As far as acceptance, MARS is a fairly diverse group of folks. Some
are up in age, some are retired and homebound, some are fit and ready
for deployment at the drop of a hat. Since there are requirements for
continued membership, participation requirements, reporting
requirements, requirements for pulling NCS and ANCS, requirements for
NIMS compliance, now the requirement for a General or higher
license.... Then you can see that the members have to meet certain
obligations and benchmarks to continue to be a member. With this in
mind, the program has some fairly receptive members, who wanted to go
further in their service in, and understanding of the art of
communications.. Most of them are quite willing to try something new.
We haven't spent the degree of time on Easypal as we have with MT-63.
But with each region having up to 10 one hour long nets scheduled each
day, and each net has the requirement for some sort of training, and
many members are uniquely qualified in one aspect of the training or
another, it becomes fairly easy to see how a new mode can be
introduced, explained, setup and operation help given, and results
seen within the course of an hour and in an interactive manner in a
disciplined net structure.
Is MARS the silver bullet? Hardly. It has it's growing pains as much
as any organization.
In Amateur Radio, if there is a community that has 3 Amateur Radio
operators, there will be 4 opinions on every subject and pretty soon
there will be the need for 5 repeaters to be established so they can
communicate with their "group". We all can key the Mic, but many
times, as "communicators" we show that we can send out a signal, but
actual communication is not often what results. The organized format
of MARS, the requirements, continuous training, forward looking (not
driving the car by only looking through the rear-view mirror), the
disciplined net structure. All of these things help form a group that
is dedicated to the art of emergency communications. Once that subset
is created, most of the QRM is left behind, and they can concentrate
on the task at hand.
Overall, I am usually fairly happy to be associated with MARS.
BTW, the General class or higher requirement was recently introduced,
with the main purpose to allow interoperability with ARES, RACES and
other Amateur radio groups. So we would sure like to see some
organized effort for both groups to start working together.
As usual, far more of an answer than you requested, but maybe some
extra content slipped in that makes the big picture more visible.
David
KD4NUE
-----Original Message-----
*From:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Andrew O'Brien
*Sent:* Friday, March 27, 2009 12:01 AM
*To:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
*Subject:* [digitalradio] Easypal in MARS
-
>
> As an aside, if you really want to see something that is slick,
give Easy
> Pal a shot for sending text. Also ultra high resolution pictures
with no
> scan lines that occupy 20KB of data on each end. 90 seconds to
send or
> receive, with the ability to only request the individual blocks
that weren't
> received properly to be sent again. We are also utilizing it in
MARS.
>
> As I said, I am still optimistic,
>
> David
> KD4NUE
David, I am interested to learn of this. Rick , myself , and
several others in this group played around with EasyPal a year or
so ago, we also thought it had interesting uses for file
transfers. How it are MARS folks accepting EasyPal?
Andy K3UK
