Jon, your terrain appears to be similar to that found in my local area. Without VHF or UHF repeaters, VHF/UHF is quite difficult to maintain.
Regionally, others have been having good outcomes on 80M and also via 6M. With horizontally polarized antennas, 2M seems to do OK if a digital mode is used. The Pittsburg area group (WPANBEMS) has regular 80 meter practice nets. Their experiments using Olivia and MT63 with wrap files are working well. It may well turn out that this method is more reliable on HF than other peer-to-server methods . PSKMAIL's concept is good if the network of servers expands. Andy K3UK --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "JonP" <jpere...@...> wrote: > > The purpose of this message is to ask for people's experience and thoughts > about which modes and methods of digital to use for specific EMCOMM scenarios. > > I'm in Fairfield County CT. Relatively small in size, relatively dense in > population. Hilly enough that VHF coverage in the northern half of the > county is spotty (even with the fixed repeaters currently in place) and in > general VHF is limited to about 20 miles radius throughout the county even > with a good base station and a reasonably tall antenna. > > We are told that the most likely scenario is that hams would be deployed to > shelters or other fixed locations where our primary responsibility will be > passing message traffic -- either formal NTS traffic or long list traffic > such as shelter logistics lists, shelter occupancy lists, etc. > > My question is what modes/methods/protocols to focus on when planning for > that kind of usage. Some of the scenarios we are considering are: > > 1. Long List shelter messages sent radio-to-radio direct on VHF FM (possibly > via a repeater). In this scenario, Winlink is not available. > > We've been experimenting with WinPack and it seems reasonably reliable over > short distances. However, it is somewhat slow, and it's not clear to me if > it does error checking or not. We've noticed some quirks where the receiving > station has to keep hitting enter to get the entire message (it receives two > or three lines at a time between hitting the enter key). Is there other > software or are there other modes of operation that people would recommend > for this purpose? > > 2. Long List shelter messages sent via WinLink. > > WinLink via radio is grass-growing slow, but seems to be the major focus of > most EMCOMM email planning. We can understand using it to reach internet > email if there is no internet service available in the disaster area. What > about within the disaster area if we have choice between radio-to-radio > direct (e.g., via WinPack) or going via WinLink. Which would you consider > the more desirable approach, or is there some other approach you would > recommend? > > 3. Formatted NTS messages. > > Sending NTS messages by voice is certainly doable, but the idea of sending > hundreds of such messages by voice doesn't sound like an efficient method of > communications (although it's there if nothing else is available). There are > any number of programs and macros that produce formatted NTS text output, so > what are people doing in terms of sending such messages digitally? Again, > send them via WinLink if available? Send them via WinPack? Send them via > something else? > > If anyone wants to respond to me off the group, you can select my name and > email address (instead of the group) when you reply to this message. > > Thanks. > > Jon > KB1QBZ > > message cross-posted on PacLinkMP group. >
