Mike,

Thanks for your comments - mine are below:

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 15:52:25 -0500, Mike Coslo wrote:



Leo wrote:
Very insightful, Mike! Especially the use of digital voice, and the
transmission of images on 144 MHz repeaters. That does make sense!
I'm surprised that digital voice in particular is not being played
with much today on HF - that may well be the future of radio right
there, based on the direction the commercial broadcasters are headed.

I thought I replied to this post, but maybe not. I think that Digital
voice takes up more BW than SSB, so there will probably be a wait for
future developments.

True, but maybe one of the roles of the 'new' amateur service would be
to serve as a testbed for new technologies like this one. With all of
the new licensees concentrating on playing around with it, and no old
low-tech stuff to impede them , improvements may come more quickly
than in our current scenario.


I would also expect to see much more emphasis on the convergence of
the Internet with amateur radio - IRLP, e-mail servers, wireless
messaging and similar concepts, for example. Handheld radios would
probably have many cellular-like features - text messaging and
built-in cameras, for example.

Probably. Ham/Internet functions would probably be a lot better than
what they are now, and people like me, that don't think that the
Internat is Ham radio would not have time to form their biases.

Make that one 'us' - I don't consider any Internet-linked radio system
to be a 'real' radio - more like a telephone, at best. But, you are
absolutely correct, this bias of ours would not exist at all! Folks
who grew up in the age of the 'Net may see the new Radio service as an
extension of it.

I am positive that CW would be rediscovered and resurrected by those
who wished to experiment with a historic signalling method used in the
golden days of long distance communication. Special interest groups
would spring up, as they would for RTTY, SITOR and other interesting
though antiquated protocols.

I agree about the CW. That would probably come about as a minimalist
thing, kind of like QRP is now, but with extremely simple equipment.

I don't think that RTTY would come about. I think amateurs got started
on RTTY after getting surplus writers. There probably wouldn't be many
of them left today. And the encoding scheme wouldn't likely be adopted

I was thinking more of those folks who had been monitoring some of the
commercial RTTY utility broadcasts (like the Canadian Army's aviation
forecasts out of Halifax, NS at a blistering 75 Baud, for example),
and who would want to try it out for themselves. With a PC, encoding
schemes are relatively simple to create and play around with - maybe
some nut would do it just to see if they could? (Maybe even this
nut..... )



However, truly outmoded forms of
communication common today would not exist at all, such as the
repeater phone patch (in an era of cheap cellphones, who would even
think up this one?) For emergency use, a similar interface to the
public network would be provided, perhaps directly to a PSTN operator.
No more personal phone calls, though!).

Agreed.

Without the legacy of all of the current AM, CW, SSB, RTTY etc.
equipment from years gone by, the requirement to fully support these
modes on the new bands would not exist. What modes would be popular
in equipment produced to meet the demands of the amateur service? In
addition to standalone radios (at least for handheld service anyway),
would we see black boxes designed to interface to PC and antenna, with
software to run all manner of digital communication (high speed modem,
digital voice, image transmission, low-res full motion video, etc.)?

I would also anticipate that, in the interest of ensuring compliance
with regulations, that each commercial radio may be designed to
automatically transmit a unique identifier over the air, which would
allow authorities to trace back faulty, out-of-band or malicious
operation to a particular unit. This feature could be coupled with a
built-in GPS receiver, to further aid in localizing the radio if and
when necessary. This may well raise privacy concerns, but it could be
mandated as part of the operating licence, just as mandatory
transmission of the operators' call sign at intervals is today. And,
as we are assuming a brand new service, it would be relatively easy to
do - with no older units to retrofit. What would happen with
homebuilt equipment, though?

hmmmm. not sure if I like that!

Me either - concepts like this scare the heck out of me. But, the
potential for some unsavoury character or terrorist to acquire a radio
with the capability to communicate globally (and stealthily - pretty
hard to find one, especially if it transmits on a random schedule!!)
and use it for whatever nefarious purpose may prompt the government
who created the 'new' amateur service to build this in right from the
start. It's very technically possible, and cheap and practical if
done en masse right from the beginning. (after all, who ever thought
that an innocuous little computer in your car could be used to produce
data to nail you in court over an accident?? Hmmmm. That wasn't in the
Owners Manual....)

Included as a discussion point......we'll see if anyone else shares
this view / concern.


With respect to testing, I would anticipate that the regulatory and
operating etiquette sections would continue to exist in virtually
their present form. Along with the addition of more Digital questions
to the theoretical portion of the tests, we may well see questions on
interconnection to the Internet, firewalling and network security.

There may be a new test section on emergency traffic handling, radio
net and message relay operations - this being the most likely premise
that we would be able to convince anyone to hand over all of this
valuable radio spectrum to us in the first place! And given the
priority of national security in our post-9/11 world, there may be a
mandate for the amateur service to link very closely with the various
emergency management agencies, upon governmental request?

I would envision a requirement for perhaps two different licence
levels, though - one for the basic equipment operator, limited to
perhaps 100 or 200 watts, commercially built and type-approved
transmitting equipment only, not permitted to act as control operator
of repeaters. A higher level licence would be granted upon passing
more stringent testing on RF safety and high power operation, repeater
commissioning, internetworking and advanced electronic theory, which
would remove these restrictions.

Either licence level would have full access to all bands and modes,
with no restrictions other than those listed above. The licence
levels are not intended to be incentive based, but to ensure
competence and safety (both personal and public) when installing and
operating multi-user automated-access, internetworked or high RF power
output equipment.

Of course, there is the remote possibility that a Usenet group
dedicated to the endless (and animated!) discussion of whether RTTY
testing should be discontinued might crop up - hopefully very remote



HAR!!

Yup - the seeds are already sown for "NORTTY International".....I can
hear 'em growing from here!

- mike KB3EIA -

73, Leo