On 8 Aug 2003 10:12:11 -0700, N2EY wrote:

AMTOR is pretty much dead, I am told.

Certainly not as popular as it once was, but I don't think it's entirely
"dead."

How many HF amateur AMTOR contacts have you or anyone you know made in
the past year?

Yet SITOR - the commercial version of AMTOR - is the standard HF
mode of data communication in the maritime service. That, and not
obscenenly-expensive satellite comms, is what killed maritime CW.
The ship's purser or deck officers can pull up the preset HF
transceiver channel and pound away, and even personal e-mail is now
sent and received by a SITOR connection to AOL via Globe Wireless,
the successor to RCA and ITT, via an AOL "kiosk" in the recreation
areas. No Radio Officer needed.

One of the San Francisco area marine radio techs, a ham, applied to
the FCC to be able to offer PACTOR service in the marine bands, and
after consulation with the ITU, his request was turned down because
it was not an international standard and would not give that much
improvement over SITOR considering the changes necessary.

And the US Coast Guard and other similar agencies world-wide
continue to transmit NAVTEX bulletins (marine broadcasts) on 518 kHz
worldwide using SITOR.

Of course what really drove all that was PC/soundcard setups becoming
affordable.

Agreed ... multimode with a std SSB radio and PC ... cool stuff.

Yeah - I can tune SITOR by setting the (suppressed) carrier 2.2 kHz
higher than the channel center and using LSB. Cheapie "FSK".

Going to be "more easier" later on this week when my new Ten-Tec
computer-tuned DSP HF receiver arrives, and I can set the filtering
to just where I want it.

I'm not throwing my AMTOR/SITOR TNCs away just yet.

Sort of. But it's actually a patch job.

One reason packet is stuck at 1200 baud all these years is because
going faster would require a purpose-built data radio. Ikensu isn't
going to do it unless there's a proven market, and the failure of 9600
to get much attention means they will wait some more.

Hey, we know that we can get at least 28K or more in a standard
audio channel. But hams are cheap - nobody (including me) wants
to throw away existing 1200 baud radios and TNCs that work really
well for the type of canned messages that we get on packet, unless
they are super-whizzes at Qualcom, with due appolgies to Phil Karn
who fits that description and has done a LOT for digital ham radio
specifically and whom I admire greatly.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon