At 02:20 PM 9/1/2009, you wrote: >Culturally, that's why we'll never see it in a radio built by the >Japanese. There's very little of the cultural concept you would know >as "have a go" in their world.
Pretty much the opposite of this part of the world, where our ancestors had to be innovative just to survive, and even today, most of the land area of the country is well outside cellphone coverage (99% of the resident population is covered, but only a small percentage of the land area). Even here, in the most densely populated state, it's quite easy to drive a couple of hours and turn your phone into a fancy paperweight (for all the good it's going to do out there. ;) ). For these reasons, IRLP, Echolink and now D-STAR all took off like wildfire, and at the same time, their reliance on VHF and UHF are painfully obvious to me (these bands have that annoying habit of going out into space, instead of coming back down off the ionosphere! ;) ). 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com
