[Ares-races] View of digital

[Brian Fernandez]

We need high speed digital messaging capability in emergency service work,
our served clients can use the capability, and amateur radio could offer a
differentiated valuable product which would benefit the entire amateur radio
community. .  I really do not care what is in the box: packet, PSK31 (yes, I
know about the error codes), WinLink or pepperoni pizza as long as it
performs.  If it has an input, an output, a power switch, and it can work
under field conditions without a nuclear power plant, that’s a system I want
and if doesn’t have all that, I’ll take what I can get.

 

Nothing is ever perfect, every system has flaws and if we wait another
decade or two for the “perfect” system and throw rocks at every new idea,
but we are never going to improve our capabilities -----  improvement only
happens if we start deploying a variety of new systems and working with
them.

 

Did you notice the §97.401(b) comment by the FCC?  The FCC has formalized
its policy for issuing an emergency communications declaration (ECD) on
Amateur Radio Service frequencies. The policy, which became effective August
2, states that ECDs will be issued for VHF or UHF repeaters--if the licensee
consents--or on simplex channels in the 60-meter band. The FCC will not
entertain requests to specifically sequester frequencies in other HF bands
for emergency traffic only. Past emergency communications
declarations--typically issued during weather-related emergencies--have put
frequencies on 75 and 40 meters off limits to general use in an affected
region. 

 

One sage observer has interpreted this, along with BPL, as part of a
concerted move to push amateurs off the HF bands over time or at the least
into much narrower HF channels.  Of course, that might also require digital
techniques.  But it is a wee bit embarrassing to be pushed into the
technical future by a Federal Regulatory Agency.

 

No matter how you slice it, digital systems seem to be in our future.  So
let’s start.  We only lose by dithering

 

Brian

K1BRF