On Wed, 7 May 2008 00:06:21 EDT, AF6AY wrote:

The migration of mass-volume messaging from HF to
microwaves via commsat and, later, high-speed optical fiber cable,
were done to avoid the ionospheric disturbances common to HF.

Actually, Len, the first "migration" was to the pre-fiber undersea
cables. I was involved in moving Israel's circuits off HF onto the
Haifa-Marseilles cable (and thence onto the TAT-5 cable) in 1967,
several years before the parallel Intelsat satellite service was
turned on. We had several ISB circuits to NY - double hop, mind you -
and the rest of our circuits were HF to London, Paris, Athens, Moscow,
and several other European cities and thence by landline and TAT-5 to
the rest of the world. Of course, that all changed when Intelsat and
the fiber cables came into service.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

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

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net