Bill Gunshannon wrote:
Is Phil, KA9Q
still active out that way or is he too deep into the commercial stuff
anymore?

He's pretty much retired these days; I believe he's mostly into science
education (speaking at high schools and junior colleges) these days.

Last time we had dinner a few months ago he was real excited by near-space
balloon flights and using ham radio to relay video and telemetry. One of
his high-school groups had just had a rather successful flight and collected
some interesting data and video.

The HSMM folk have found that some brands of WAP can be told to operate
in the ham bands (2.4 and 5.8 GHz) at increased power and are using them
for high speed data links, both digital voice and data. And of course
there are the D-Star folk with their medium-speed digital links. There
is interest in Internet linking in both groups. A Google search on "HSMM"
will probably yield some informative info.

I regret to say that the www.ampr.org site is rather sparse right now,
as we just rebuilt it, but I hope to add more to it as the months go on.

Best wishes!
- Brian