My philosophical negative feelings about Pactor III and other proprietary systems is that they approach the use of codes and ciphers that are prohibited in the amateur service. Amateur radio is in many ways self policing. Proprietary coding impedes that. The other thing in particular about Pactor III is that it is used to some extent to bypass commercial services available. We of course have to be careful here. The accepted National Traffic System did/does a somewhat similar thing. Details are different though in terms of automation and purpose. NTS is good advertising for amateur radio. It does have negative impact on some operations though. I do a lot of QRP fox hunting and various NTS nets have clobbered a fox from time to time. Perhaps the proprietary systems should be required to make available free software to receive their transmissions. This might be good advertising for them to allow us to see what they do and decide if we want to pay the price to transmit them. It would also allow easier enforcement of existing rules if necessary or make it clear that they are not being violated. This thread will probably end soon. That's probably a good thing because the discussion could go on for ever and is really not on topic. 73 - Mike WA8BXN ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected]
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