If you wish to file your comments with the ARRL regarding their bandwidth
proposal, there is little time left to do so. Comments should be sent to:



It is my understanding that the proposal, in it's current form, will allow
WL2K stations control of nearly 40% of ALL of our current allocations in the
10, 15, 20, 40, and 80 meter bands. This does not include their efforts to
swallow up 1/2 of the 30 meter band. CW users will give up the most when
you consider that these users will share their remaining bandwidth with all
"narrow" digital modes ... which is everything BUT WL2K. Also, packet radio
will forever be laid to rest on the HF bands, as the proposal will eliminate
those miniscule parts of the bands for their auto-forwarding.

If it's OK with you to give up 40% of your favorite bands to internet e-mail
spewing Pactor III robots, then disregard this message, and your wish will
come true. The ARRL is wearing blinders, and can only see one direction at
this time, and that's WL2K. I don't intend to stand idly by and give up 40%
of our most popular bands so some rich dudes in their motor homes, or on
sailboats, can enjoy cheating the legitimate ISP's out of the fees that they
charge for providing this service.

I am all in favor of reorganizing our allocations in an effort to
accommodate new digital modes, but this proposal takes way too much from the
98% of amateur radio operators who are not interested in turning our hobby
into a cheap internet e-mail gateway for the rich and priviledged. Oh yeah,
they will cry emergency communications, and the "amateur radio inernet
e-mail for every EM's desk" motto, but it's just not worth it.

Tell the ARRL how you feel ... this could certainly be your last chance to
do so.

Ponder this ... if these new wideband modes are soooo efficient, then why do
they require 20 Khz of space? If you give packet radio 20 Khz, it too could
be much faster. The speed limit on packet radio is now determined by the
pitiful amount of bandwidth allocated to them. Why does WL2K, a proprietary
mode, with very high startup costs deserve all of this spectrum when packet
radio has had to deal with the microscopic slices of bandwidth for all of
these years??? It just smells of yesterday's garbage, and I don't think
that the proposal, in it's current form, will benefit anyone but the 2%
minority fighting for 40% of our bands.

For the record ... I do NOT, nor do I plan to utilize packet radio on the HF
bands. My concerns are for the service in general, and the negative impact
this proposal will have.

Best 73,
Luke Bannister AD4MG

--------------
Deputy State Emergency Radio Officer - Digital Communications
Virginia RACES, Inc.

In article ,
says...

If you wish to file your comments with the ARRL regarding their bandwidth
proposal, there is little time left to do so. Comments should be sent to:



It is my understanding that the proposal, in it's current form, will allow
WL2K stations control of nearly 40% of ALL of our current allocations in the

snippety

What would really have helped is links to sites that support your
assertions. I've visited both the ARRL site at this link:

http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2005/04/01/1/?nc=1

...and winlink.org at this one...

http://winlink.org/sysop/PMBO_FREQ.htm

...and I can't find anything which leads me to believe that there
would be any sort of "packet-spewing robots" polluting the HF bands. In
fact, I don't see anything other than a neat-looking project to
establish a worldwide digital network that does not depend on the
Internet.

If you can give a clearer explanation of how you came to your
conclusions, including some specific references to back them up, I will
cheerfully make my voice heard at ARRL (I'm a lifetime member).

73 de KC7GR

--
Dr. Anton T. Squeegee, Director, Dutch Surrealist Plumbing Institute.
(Known to some as Bruce Lane, ARS KC7GR,
kyrrin (a/t) bluefeathertech[d=o=t]calm -- www.bluefeathertech.com
"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped
with surreal ports?"

"Dr. Anton T. Squeegee" wrote in message
news:MPG.1cb86fee170dc028989700@localhost...
In article ,
says...

If you wish to file your comments with the ARRL regarding their bandwidth
proposal, there is little time left to do so. Comments should be sent
to:



It is my understanding that the proposal, in it's current form, will
allow
WL2K stations control of nearly 40% of ALL of our current allocations in
the

snippety

What would really have helped is links to sites that support your
assertions. I've visited both the ARRL site at this link:

http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2005/04/01/1/?nc=1

...and winlink.org at this one...

http://winlink.org/sysop/PMBO_FREQ.htm

...and I can't find anything which leads me to believe that there
would be any sort of "packet-spewing robots" polluting the HF bands. In
fact, I don't see anything other than a neat-looking project to
establish a worldwide digital network that does not depend on the
Internet.

Except for the minor points that WinLink2K requires the internet
to work, and uses the internet to "forward" it's traffic ...

If you can give a clearer explanation of how you came to your
conclusions, including some specific references to back them up, I will
cheerfully make my voice heard at ARRL (I'm a lifetime member).

Read up on WinLink2K, AirMail, etc. Google will help.

--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli

"Jerry" writes:
this time, and that's WL2K. I don't intend to stand idly by and give up 40%
of our most popular bands so some rich dudes in their motor homes, or on
sailboats, can enjoy cheating the legitimate ISP's out of the fees that they
charge for providing this service.

Why stop there? Why not ban ham radio altogether, since (for example)
ham voice communication cheats all those poor starving phone companies?

Ponder this ... if these new wideband modes are soooo efficient, then why do
they require 20 Khz of space? If you give packet radio 20 Khz, it too could
be much faster. The speed limit on packet radio is now determined by the
pitiful amount of bandwidth allocated to them.

I'm all in favor of more bandwidth for spread spectrum packet, since
it means less likelihood of interference (a voice or CW conversation
could happen right on top of a 20 khz packet session without either
interfering with the other). But I agree ham radio should not be a
general purpose internet gateway.

One reasonable solution could be to limit the maximum bit rate on HF
to RTTY speed, 60 bits/sec or so, while still allowing spreading the
60 bits/sec across 20 khz of bandwidth. That's fast enough to send
reasonable email and to have realtime text chat, would not require any
tuning, and would be very effective at low transmit power. I've
been interested in this approach for quite a while.

Why does WL2K, a proprietary mode, with very high startup costs
deserve all of this spectrum when packet radio has had to deal with
the microscopic slices of bandwidth for all of these years???

I'm not familiar with WL2K but I don't like the idea of any type of
proprietary mode being given special recognition in the band plan
for any reason.

"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
...

I'm not familiar with WL2K but I don't like the idea of any type of
proprietary mode being given special recognition in the band plan
for any reason.

I know what you mean... When the ARRL starts to mandate which digital mode
we must use, then rationality and the scientific method both go out the
window. - By introducing "politics" ( if you want to call fascism
'politics' ) into the matter, the ARRL puts itself on the tabloid level. -
They undermine themselves while doing the same to the rest of hobby.

Corruption and stupidity at ARRL HQ... Sumner and Haynie are both in this,
up to thier eyebrows.

Charles Brabham, N5PVL

Director: USPacket http://www.uspacket.org
Admin: HamBlog.Com http://www.hamblog.com
Weblog: http://www.hamblog.com/blog_n5pvl.php

"Charles Brabham" writes:
I know what you mean... When the ARRL starts to mandate which digital mode
we must use, then rationality and the scientific method both go out the
window.

I don't have a problem with the idea of mandating in favor of some
digital modes at the expense of others. But the mandated modes should
be non-proprietary. Spectrum is not the property of any particular vendor.

"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
...
"Charles Brabham" writes:
I know what you mean... When the ARRL starts to mandate which digital
mode
we must use, then rationality and the scientific method both go out the
window.

I don't have a problem with the idea of mandating in favor of some
digital modes at the expense of others. But the mandated modes should
be non-proprietary. Spectrum is not the property of any particular
vendor.

I think you missed the point.

WinLink2K depends on connectivity to the internet to work.
For emergency communication it is totally useless.

If the internet were available, one would simple USE it
in the normal manner. If it is not available, WinLink2K
is of no help to you at all. The whole concept is a scam.

--

... Hank

http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli

"Hank Oredson" writes:
I think you missed the point.

WinLink2K depends on connectivity to the internet to work. For
emergency communication it is totally useless.

I'm not sure what WinLink2K is or what its relation to emergency
communication is supposed to be. Is there a url about it?

I've been interested for a while in a packet mode that uses the
internet. An endpoint node wouldn't have to be on the net, but it
would connect to a remote node that also had internet connectivity.
So it would be fine for an emergency at the endpoint. If there was a
catastrophe that took out the whole internet, then it wouldn't work.

Gidday Paul

There has been for years

The NOS TCP/IP over AX25 system that was setup around the late 1980's
allows you to have gateways with various interfaces and tunnels. ie
connected radios, modems, ethernet etc. There use to be quite a few
wormholes where one use to pass packets without infringing amateur
licenses. Basically you can either run TCP/IP over radio and internet
links with any kind of routing/rerouting protocol you like. Each point
where there are dual interfaces can also be an intelligent gateway/server.

Apart from political and possibly legal reasons there is no technical
problem with setting up a RF (amateur) link to replace/failover internet
ones. Some care must obviously be exercised in bandwidth requirements.

There is a lot more available on this that is beyond the small scope of
my post.

Linux boxes for example can do this job nowadays. I believe there are
Windows equivalents but havent checked.

Cheers Bob VK2YQA

Paul Rubin wrote:


I'm not sure what WinLink2K is or what its relation to emergency
communication is supposed to be. Is there a url about it?

I've been interested for a while in a packet mode that uses the
internet. An endpoint node wouldn't have to be on the net, but it
would connect to a remote node that also had internet connectivity.
So it would be fine for an emergency at the endpoint. If there was a
catastrophe that took out the whole internet, then it wouldn't work.

Bob Bob writes:
The NOS TCP/IP over AX25 system that was setup around the late 1980's
allows you to have gateways with various interfaces and tunnels.

I'm familiar with NOS but I don't understand what it has to do with
WinLink2K. What specifically is WinLink2K? Thanks.