At 12:03 AM 3/28/2010, you wrote:
>The important question to me: is Internet use good or bad for ham >radio (IRLP, Echolink, WIRES, DVDongle/DVAP, remote HF control, etc.) > >My answer is "Yes." Exactly Gary, you've pretty much covered the issues. >We do need RF capability - lots of it - just to maintain our >distinct character. We need it to back up our claim of being >"unstoppable" - communications anywhere, anytime, off the grid. As >far as I know, nobody's linked any D-STAR repeaters by RF yet. Can >we get D-STAR communications out of a disaster area with a hop or >two of RF, then fully connected to the Internet? Now there's a good projects to try - RF linked D-STAR, using a system developed by hams. Eventually, even HF links for regional coverage would be nice, though the bitrate would have to be cut down (then it wouldn't be D-STAR!). >We want RF because, well, because we love it. It's more than our >heritage, it's our reason for being hams. RF poses challenges that >are interesting to learn about and overcome. The rest of the world >wants only consistency and reliability in communications. We want it all. Agree totally. As someone who first discovered VoIP in the mid 1990s (I remember the first version of Iphone and played with Speak Freely back then - over a 14.4k modem!), I found Internet-Internet VoIP "interesting", but several years later, I discovered that adding RF to the mix made it a lot more fun, and got hooked on the idea of connecting radios to the Internet. Nearly 10 years later, I'm still hooked, though wanting to crack some of the bigger nuts, such as a reliable way to incorporate HF into the Internet connected realm. Not so much as a remote base for assisted DXing, but as a way of bridging the "last 100 miles" into a disaster area and the rest of the Internet connected infrastructure (which is tougher to do seamlessly). I actually have a working system, well almost. The difficult problem of reliable detection of SSB is pretty close (and I've gained a significant S/N boost in the process), the only thing keeping it off the air is boring old issues like filtering and shielding to keep transmitted RF out of the system. :) >In the middle >For many hams, especially new hams but also plenty of us old >curmudgeons, the Internet is woven into the fabric, and it's not >going away. We like it. We probably use Skype, Yahoo or AIM (and >hams who dismiss this technology would be better off knowing it, if >not embracing it). Ham radio still has its own character. The Internet is an important part of modern ham radio culture. Its real strength lies in allowing us to share ideas when not on the air (such as this group). However, we do have to remember to play some real ham radio from time - Get on air, work on projects, do some emergency comms/public service work, etc. 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com
