From: John Smith on Jul 28, 8:48 pm


Don't tell them that digital voice is really a "stream" of numbers which
describe your voice/words/tone/etc really, and the other phone (computer
really) decodes the instructions and recreates a "clone" of the original analog
signal which you will hear.

TOO LATE!!! I did that a few years ago. Morsemen would have NONE
of that..."morse code gets through when nothing else will"...blah,
blah, blah, blah, blech.

Tsk, these mighty "experimenters" and "state of the art" advancers
don't realize that CDs of music and DVDs of motion pictures are
(horrors) DIGITALLY RECORDED!!!

They don't realize that POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) is
digitized between exchanges...and sometimes inside the same
exchange. Even morsemen's heavy breathing is digitized.


Also, skip the part about these numbers being encased in packets with a CRC
(cyclic redundancy code, read about it on the net, simple to the point of being
boring--think "error checking" here) and if there is a "error worth noting" the
packet is discarded and a copy of it resent (if it can't be done within a
reasonable length of time--microseconds, a defective packet is "played" hoping
you can "decode" the error with your ear), so that digital audio can be about
as close to perfect as can be obtained (indeed, it can be perfect, if that is
what you want--or not at all!) Also, the phones have loads of memory (the good
ones) so that packets can be stored and ordered and time spent holding one
packet while a previous is being "error corrected."

Irrelevant to here. Morsemen, mighty and macho as they wannabe,
have told us that "CELL PHONES ARE *USELESS* IN ANY EMERGENCY!"
That's that. No goodnik. The telephone system GOES DOWN in any
emergency situation, can't be used at all!


Well, in a nutshell description, that is... but just don't mention all that,
too confusing for "Neanderthal hams", and the few others here probably already
know...

Sorry, John, implying that SOME in here are IGNORANT brings on
accusations of "hating ham radio!!!"

Can't have that! All have to LOVE ham radio as the ARRL taught
everbody sometime...(hic)

Too bad there's no "surplus" SINCGARS radios...the largest field
radio production for U.S. land forces ever...a quarter million
produced since the first went operational in 1989.* Digital
voice with (now) built-in communications security or COMSEC
with on-line encryption/decryption. NATO allies have the same
system, compatible with U.S. SINCGARS radios.

* Some CASES of older SINCGARS have turned up on EBay, but none
with intact electronic guts. Those must have been from the
"SIP" (SINCGARS Improvement Program) by ITT Fort Wayne, IN.

Heck, not a one in here is familiar with Peterson and Weldon's
"Error-Correcting Codes" (MIT Press, nice red hardcover). THE
reference for digital coding with/without error correction.

I'd rather reference Brian Burke's statement:

"Morse code gets through when everything else will."

dit dot