Hi Jim,

"Jim Lux" wrote in message
...
Indeed? Which issue?

A quick Googling shows July 2005 ("IEEE 802.11 Experiments in Virginia's
Shenandoah Valley"), but there was also one in the last 3 months or so that
was really just an overview of how 802.11 worked (aimed very much at
beginners, actually, with an eye towards amateur usage, e.g., "Making your
SSID your call sign is a good idea...").

It's all a judgement call, but the intent is that amateur radio not be used
where there is a commercial service that can provide the same functions.
This is so the commercial entities can't claim that someone using amateur
frequencies is getting an unfair competitive advantage (among other reasons)

Agreed, although as I've mentioned previously, these days most of what happens
on the amateur frequencies *could* just as readily be done with cell phones or
your DSL/cable modem/POTS Internet connection. I think the commercial
entities are much more interested in getting the *spectrum* that hams have
rather than trying to force the local Elks to quite using a 2m repeater to
coordinate their meetings. :-)

There is a long history of amateur radio being used to avoid expensive
commercial services: People used it for years as a replacement for long
distance telephone calls prior to those rates becoming dirt cheap. It's
almost ironic to what extent this motivates people -- international calls that
were $5/minute in 1970 are now often no more than $0.05/minute, yet there's
still plenty of interest in, e.g., Skype to reduce that to "free!" (after you
pay your fixed monthly Internet bill). Heck, these days I think that
satellite phones cost less per minute than many international calls 35 years
ago!

One area that isn't readily available commercially yet is "reasonably"
high-speed Internet connections (e.g., 256kbps or better) for folks who are
mobile out in the boonies (i.e., somewhere there's no modern cell phone
coverage); that's where I'd really like to see some progress in amateur radio
(on UHF frequencies, I would imagine). WiMax might offer a viable commercial
solution here, but I imagine there are going to be large stretches of the
western and central U.S. where it'll be many decades before it's profitable to
deploy WiMax or high-speed cell phone networks; in such places a hilltop
amateur system could let amateurs with the typical 50W mobile radio "check
their e-mail" for many tens of miles in all directions.

I also think it would be cool to build something like an HF PSK31 gateway back
to the popular Internet instant-messaging services (Yahoo!, MSN!, etc.) -- I
figure the way to approach this would be to hack together the bits of PSK31
code out there with the bits of a multi-protocol messaging program such as
Pidgin (formerly GAIM).

---Joel

Joel Kolstad wrote:
There is a long history of amateur radio being used to avoid expensive
commercial services: People used it for years as a replacement for long
distance telephone calls prior to those rates becoming dirt cheap. It's
almost ironic to what extent this motivates people -- international calls that
were $5/minute in 1970 are now often no more than $0.05/minute, yet there's
still plenty of interest in, e.g., Skype to reduce that to "free!" (after you
pay your fixed monthly Internet bill). Heck, these days I think that
satellite phones cost less per minute than many international calls 35 years
ago!

Here in Israel, it's long since happened. Cell phones have replaced
HT's and phone patches are a thing of the past. Even without VoIP last
fall a long distance company had unlimited calls to the U.S. and
Canada $10 a month. That offer is gone now, but the regular price is
about $.04 a minute except for the "default" carrier which is $.10
a minute, less if you "join".


Quite simply no one here really cares about ham radio anymore.
The Israel Amateur Radio Club has worked hard to keep relegious
Jews and new immegrants out of it, and the "new" generation
does not want to have to take a morse code test.


It's only a few "old guys" left. :-(

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

Joel Kolstad wrote:



I also think it would be cool to build something like an HF PSK31 gateway back
to the popular Internet instant-messaging services (Yahoo!, MSN!, etc.) -- I
figure the way to approach this would be to hack together the bits of PSK31
code out there with the bits of a multi-protocol messaging program such as
Pidgin (formerly GAIM).

Bonnie Crystal and the HFLINK crowd is doing just this, using ALE text
messages.



---Joel

On 2007-07-27, Rich Grise wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:13:02 +0100, Jeff wrote:

" Well.. not all the 802.11b/g channels are in the amateur band, and even
there, there is a power limit (transmitter output power, though, not
EIRP), so you could conceivably fire up your 1500 Watt transmitter into
a 20dBi antenna and blast away.

That is what the moonbounce operators do, but with more antenna gain!!

There is the other rule about minimum power needed for communication,
though.

Again moonbounce is not uncommon in the 13cms band.

Yikes! I was just doing a little calculating, and you could put a 20 dB
Yagi in your shirt pocket! =:-O

how many elements ?

I saw a stacked yagi 2.4GHz antenna when I was in the pay-tv business
iirc 2 rows of 25 elements. dunno what gain it had.

Bye.
Jasen

Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2007-07-27, Rich Grise wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:13:02 +0100, Jeff wrote:

" Well.. not all the 802.11b/g channels are in the amateur band, and even

there, there is a power limit (transmitter output power, though, not
EIRP), so you could conceivably fire up your 1500 Watt transmitter into
a 20dBi antenna and blast away.


That is what the moonbounce operators do, but with more antenna gain!!


There is the other rule about minimum power needed for communication,
though.

Again moonbounce is not uncommon in the 13cms band.

Yikes! I was just doing a little calculating, and you could put a 20 dB
Yagi in your shirt pocket! =:-O


how many elements ?

I saw a stacked yagi 2.4GHz antenna when I was in the pay-tv business
iirc 2 rows of 25 elements. dunno what gain it had.

Bye.
Jasen


for miniaturizing wi fi wi max or any band in the 100 MC to 10GC range,
You can use FWT antennas. FWT(Focused Wave antennas) miniaturize and
ruggedize antennas by embedding them into an engineered dielectric, when
hardened becomes and integral part of the antenna. For the real high
gain antennas, the mechanical support for the extra eleemtns is provided
by the intirinisic design of FWT antennas. Built in Balun and have
begun to integrate electronic onto he body of the fwt antenna. this
eliminates the rf connector, looses and performance degradation that
occurs right at the antenna to first stage interconnection!

Best regards,

Marc Popek

www.fwt.niat.net
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=LVMarc