Email Robots are coming to RTTY and CW!

You are incorrect. Yes position reports are sent out with ui frames as well as messages but messages on most aprs programs keep sending until an ack is received. That same principal can be used for a winlink type system on APRS. If the message doesn't go within a certain time then it stops but can be retransmitted anytime. Winlink does the same thing. If it cannot connect to a QRM bot then it times out. APRS has expanded greatly and can still expand to accommodate Winlink too if they wanted to.

 

ARRL IS, ONCE AGAIN, NOT ACTING IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF HAM RADIO.

COMMUNICATE YOUR DISPLEASURE WITH ARRL. CALL TODAY AND CANCEL YOUR ARRL MEMBERSHIP.



UNFORTUNATELY, THE ONLY LANGUAGE THAT ARRL UNDERSTANDS IS $$MONEY$$. SO, YOU NEED TO COMMUNICATE WITH ARRL USING LANGUAGE ARRL WILL UNDRSTAND.

 

Automated two-way stations on HF are a disaster waiting to happen. It amazes me that anyone thinks that putting automated stations on an international band (where propagation causes one-way communications) is a good idea.

What good is any form of 'frequency in use' detection when it's possible to cause interference to stations you can't even hear? That only works on frequencies where if I can hear you, you 99% of the time can hear me (excluding rare events like atmospheric effects, meteor, etc). That isn't the case on HF!

Gosh! Idiots!

 

I am remembering now also that the 60 meter proposed rule making submitted by the ARRL would allow digital
and cw on these frequencies.  I feel it would be a big
mistake to allow these auto-robot digital station access
to frequencies the amateurs are not the primary users.
It is terrible that a digi-robot should cause qrm to
amateurs but if it happens to primary users on 30 meters or 60 meters these bands could be lost. Ironic
that we send $$ to the ARRL frequency defense fund.
Sad isn't it.  Shame on the ARRL

 

Ok, didn't know that. I don't use APRS for messaging, so I didn't know if there was ack involved, to be honest.

But here's what I don't get-I use a tinytrak3+ in both of my vehicles. This device, along with a GPS that works with it, is $108.

Why can't a $1000 modem detect traffic on a frequency, but a device, slightly above $100 INCLUDING GPS, be able to?

This appears to be the sticking point with all of this-a modem that doesn't have the ability to hear. Now I understand that with HF, you can't always hear the other station, but the fact that this part is simply NOT included at all seems to be very odd to me. To me, it seems like they want to intentionally QRM.

You can't with the tinytrak-you have to set the squelch right. Ok, I suppose you could crank it all the way up and then it wouldn't sense anything but the strongest packets, but then you'll probably collide with other stations, and defeat the purpose. So you set your squelch right.

Methinks someone needs to take the winlink modem, charge an extra $100 and make it not transmit if it detects anything on the frequency.

Now I could be wrong, since I've never looked at winlink, but if we can detect a carrier with a $100 device, shouldn't a $1000 device at least TRY?

 

Sorry, Jerry, I have to disagree. She IS absolutely right.

Regulating our Service by bandwidth rather than by license class and emission mode seems to work just fine in the rest of the world where there are more Hams combined than in the United States. And, what's more, nobody in the United States will ever really know if regulating by bandwidth works here unless and until we try it.

Now, I certainly agree that, once the regulatory "flood gates" are opened, chaos might very will reign supreme for a while. But, I seriously doubt it. Far too many VFOs will still be rusted in place on 75 Meters for any major changes to the status quo to happen on our bands right away.

But, even if chaos DOES reign supreme for a while….so what?

What is so very wrong with letting Hams start deciding among ourselves "what goes where" as new modes and interests come along and become popular rather than always looking to some stupid bunch of Government bureaucrats to tell us where and how we can operate within our internationally assigned allocations?

The Amateur Service is unique among radio services in that it ISN'T "channelized" like so many other radio services are. I believe that was done for a specific reason…to allow for no-holes barred experimentation in new communication modes as the technology changed.

In fact, I'd go one step further by saying that one of the principal foundations (and justifications) for our Service IS experimentation…you know…. actually USING all that RF theory the incentive-licensing-forever crowd want us all to keep cramming into our pea brains before we regurgitate it back in front of a VE to "upgrade" our licenses.

Yet, using true US government regulatory overkill, back in the 1950s, the FCC decided that, for whatever reason, Hams weren't intelligent enough to figure such things out for themselves. So, they added regulated sub-bands (and sub-sub) bands to what were SUPPOSED to be our "wide open spaces" for experimentation under the ITU rules.

As I've said, the rest of the world never bought into any of that nonsense. As a result, most other countries in the world have very nicely avoided all the hand wringing and "sky is falling" rhetoric from the FCC-rules-enabled, crusty curmudgeons among us who have now come to view ANY change in communications technology as a mortal threat to their narrow, entrenched, elite "country club" interests.

It would now appear that the ARRL and the FCC have (finally!) begun to realize just how much our prowess for inventing new communications technologies has come to a screeching, grinding halt in the United States under their stupid "Incentive Licensing" foolishness (and the license-class and operating mode-based regulated sub-band stupidity) it created..

But, now, with the dawning of the digital age, it appears that BOTH organizations (the ARRL and the FCC) are trying desperately to reverse the mortal damage their predecessors wreaked on our Service with their horrendously restrictive, over-regulation of our frequency bands. BOTH organizations are now trying their level best to drag the Amateur Service in the United States kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

But, unfortunately, I fear the mortal damage to our Service has already been done because such regulatory overkill has also kept Amateur Radio in the technological "dark ages" for far too long.

Or, to put it another way, thanks to the crusty curmudgeon Luddites among us who STILL want to effectively shut down any meaningful experimentation on our bands with their stupid "not in my backyard" paranoia, Amateur Radio these days has become little more than a pimple on the rear end of progress in the larger technical scheme of things.

And, as a direct result of that fact, we are no longer justifying our (free!) access to the literally BILLIONS of dollars of frequency spectrum we're currently sitting on. That makes our bands "ripe for the picking" by some other Service.

Pogo was absolutely right…. we HAVE met the enemy and he IS us!

73,

Keith
KB1SF / VA3KSF

 

I filed my "NO"

I do think there are some advantages to automatic digital stations, even on HF, for educational purposes, experimenting, and emergency communications, but they shouldn't use the entire band, nor should the be used in lieu of commercial services for communications between amateur operators an non amateur operators.

 

Bonnie,

The ARRL, by it's own charter, is not in the buisiness of promoting new technology at the expense of the old. In later years, it has been trying to do exactly this. I have been an ARRL member for many years, licensed since 1958, and I have seen the ARRL change from a society dedicated to the protection of amateur spectrum to one dedicated to protection and accumulation of spectrum for an even smaller segment of radio spectrum users in the RF community, namely Winlink.

When a good boy goes bad, you punish him. ARRL needs to be mindful of the other users as well, and they have lost thier focus in this regard.

We are not, and never have been in a "technology jail"! In fact, Amateur Radio operators in years past have lead the way in technicalogical advancement. Even in the scientific research circles, there are a notable number of Hams doing the research. Those who developed Winlink are hams, and Winlink has a place to operate. So your arguments are based on emotion and have no merit in this discussion.

The fact is, that expanding room for Winlink to trample on even more operators is not in the best interest of the Amateur Radio community at large, as it is only helpful to a very small percentage of the Ham population. It has it's place, but not at the head of the line, or at the expense of the majority of the operators. You can't tell people that in order to operate on the ham bands, they have to operate in data format, and still be responsible to the general population!

That the ARRL is promoting Winlink for emergency communications may be a good thing. It does have it's place there. The FCC is well within their rights to declare any frequency open to any mode in times of distress, or protected and have done so in the past. So, if a Winlink system needs even phone band spectrum to operate during an emergency, the FCC can allow it just the same way they do when protecting Huricane watch frequencies today.

Winlink and other wideband data signals are not spectrum friendly with other analog modes, and should not be allowed to co-mingle with them. Their own research agrees with this, and yet they continue to push their agenda at the expense of the general ham community. That does not put them in good light, and only makes you look less than knowledgable, or with those who promote a technology without regard to anothers enjoyable use of a shared resource.

73,

Mike - K7OV

 

Many of us tried to Convience the ARRL that WL2K was Just plain ass wrong... Back in 2004.. They would not listen.. Althe way from the President down...

Big Business, Big Buyout... Another words the ARRL Sold us down the river.. They Smelled money... And SCS Paid the way..

73 Jerry N9LYA
ARRL Skipnet Sysop
ARRL Net Manager Indiana Section

 

Keith.... A modified Bandwidth proposal is fine.. One that does not open the Door for WL2K to proliferate the HF Spectrum and wipe out all the Narrow Band signals ...

Sorry you are mistaken about the intent of the ARRL Regulation by Bandwidth...

They are Lying to u.


73 Jerry N9LYA

 

Kathy,

I am a retired Radio Electronics Officer in the Merchant Marine. I have sent long lists via phone, CW, Sitor (Amtor for us), SatComm, (which is available during power outages as well) and most every mode of operation available in communications technology.

Winlink is "convenient" but not the only way to communicate during power outage emergencies. As the technical advisor to the City of Renton, Washington, I have advised and advocated the use of Winlink as a communications resource, but not at the expense of other modes as well. RTTY for instance can be used to send long lists, Amtor can be used, HF packet can be used and the list goes on.

73,

Mike - K7OV

 

This has been a sales pitch for a long time untill someone slaped steve and the others around the ears with proof that the B2F compresionprotocoll can be simply decompressed even if you only get a part of the message, the hard part is that you have to buy a $1000 modem to capture the transmitions.

Frankly I´m a bit surpriced that winlink even cares because they have shown not to care about iligal 3th party trafic in europe or iligal unmanned stations, dutch stations for instance need a special permit for unmanned operation and this is rarely given out for HF, they are easy enoughto spot, any dutch station that does not have a call starting with PI is not permitted to work unmanned and those that are permitted have an asigned frequentie fitting in the region 1 bandplan.

 

I hope all of the supporters of the plan continue to be ARRL members. From what I'm seeing, many people won't renew that aren't in favor of this.

Hopefully you all are enough to keep the ARRL afloat.

And hopefully someone comes to their senses and fixes the modem so it checks for a signal before it transmits. Or I can see people going out there and intentionally QRMing the robots too.

Which will just make it worse.

 

Well the problem is that winlink operates on many different freqs within the digital portion of the band. It can detect other pactor stationg but cannot detect any other type of digital signal or CW. That is the problem. Packet, APRS and PSK31 usually sit on one freq and is shared by a lot of other stations. They all use the same emission and can detect when the freq is busy or not but with the same token they cannot detect other modes either. Like I said the QRM bots are all over the band and they can only detect if the freq is busy if another pactor signal is on the band and dead on freq. The point is other modes only use maybe 2-3 freqs where as the QRM bots use almost any freq in the digital portion of the band.

Forgot to add. The reason winlink cannot detect a carrier is because it is on ssb which has no carrier compared to FM which does.

 

The problem is you cannot QRM these bots because pactor is an agressive mode and will continue to pound away until it is successful.