"Ryan, KC8PMX" wrote in message
...
Mike,

I do believe it does serve some purpose...... I have a friend that goes to
Arizona every winter due to him and his wife's health issues and he does
not
have much there to use for equipment. He and I chat via Echolink on a
regular basis on the link point connected where he is at. I also have
developed some friendships with the people that frequent that access point
(simplex access point, not a repeater one) as well. He is a 30+ year
Extra
class licensee so he CAN operate just about anywhere but only has 2m/70cm
access when he goes there.

In this case it is a very productive use of the system. In this
particular
circumstance we would never be able to communicate if it wasn't for the
system. Other than a little experimentation with it at first, I have not
used it for much more than to communicate with him though.

You could say the same things if your friend had been using a cell-phone or
regular telephone, Ryan.

You most especially could say the same things if they had been using ICQ or
any other form of Internet chat.

The fact that people use Echolink to successfully communicate does not
magically make the Internet connection "ham radio". An important
distinction to keep in mind is that our hobby is not called "Amateur
Communication", where any form of communication will serve but rather
"Amateur Radio", where the focus is solely upon radio communications.

The ARRL inadvertently created some confusion about this with thier
"communicator" promotions, a few years back.

The fact that your friends have decided to slow down and reduce the audio
quality of thier Internet chat by hanging a radio on one end or the other
does not make that Internet communication "Ham Radio"... It just means that
they are willing to put up with reduced performance in thier chat
activities, in order to have a "ham radio simulator" at one end or the
other.

In the end, Echolink serves as an excuse not to use radio to communicate "as
a ham", as in the case with your friends. It also very often serves as an
excuse not to learn more about the hobby and upgrade, as in the case of the
hundreds, perhaps thousands of hams who instantly dropped plans to upgrade,
or even to buy a radio upon discovering Echolink. Echolink devotees are just
brimming over with excuses, but none of those excuses change the fact that
Echolink is an Internet chat, not ham radio.

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Just for fun: Remember "Hands across America"? It was some kind of a wierd
promotion where they tried to get people to join hands in a solid chain,
coast to coast! There were some unexpected difficulties in mountanous and
desert areas that could have easily been foreseen, but anyway:

Imagine a chain of people, coast to coast, passing along a note like we used
to do in school, but this note goes from New York to Los Angeles,
California!

The original note is written down from a message heard on a handy-talky from
a New York repeater.

They pass the note, thousands of people passing it hand-to-hand across the
whole U.S. and finally at the end, the note is read into the microphone of
another H/T, tuned to a repeater in Los Angeles.

Headline: "Hams use handy-talkies to communicate from New York to Los
Angeles!"

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I believe it would be stretching things just a bit too much to call it an
"amateur radio" communication, don't you?

Charles Brabham, N5PVL