[CC-ARES-RACES] This is TRUE for 12 May

[JD Delancy]

Following extract is a follow up from last week's "This is TRUE" note concerning the
Ham Radio article.  Again, draw your own conclusions

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "This is True" <lyris@lyris.net>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 10:00 PM
Subject: THIS is TRUE for 12 May

 Dispatched this week to readers in 195 countries and to the School of Medicine at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it's...
 
THIS is TRUE for 12 May 2002            Copyright 2002 www.thisistrue.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
MY DISCUSSIONS OF HAM RADIO have brought quite a bit of mail. (Stick with me: this
is fairly interesting even if you aren't particularly interested in ham radio!) Mike
in California, who is also an alumnus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, points out
that there are two ways to deal with the fact the Internet has fulfilled the nerdy
need to communicate over long distances for free: you can curse the durned
newfangled technology (as I've heard many hams do) or you can embrace it. Mike says,
"I suggest that every dying amateur repeater group check out the Internet Repeater
Linking Project -- a way to tie repeaters together over the Internet. It's not
unusual to have someone pop up from anywhere in the USA, or England, South Africa,
Japan, or even McMurdo Station at the South Pole research center. The main
information
page is at http://www.irlp.net . Currently there are 438 nodes worldwide."

I had heard of this system, but never had tried it out. With a pointer of where to
go, I found a local entry point and since have talked over
this system to people from New York to New Zealand -- using a simple <$200 radio
that I have sitting on my desk, and at one point using a
tiny handheld radio. The technical achievements are VERY impressive -- this will
really help reinvigorate ham radio.

And if you think this is just a "guy thing" that doesn't impact the average person,
consider this from Carol in Colorado: "My sister and
her family live in Northern Brazil, where there are no land lines, fiber isn't
delivered to the desktop and there is no downlinking
capability. Their Internet messages are relayed through ham radio operators who are
set up to translate the message and send it along the
airwaves until it is eventually translated to my brother in law, whose e-mail
address is actually his ham radio call letters. I don't really
'get' the technical aspects of this, and you probably know better than I do how it
all works, but the thing is that the cooperation of
'hobbyists' along the route keeps them from being totally isolated in the Amazon
jungle." Indeed many of the "packet" data-over-radio techniques developed by hams
are being used to make mobile Internet available over cellular systems. Remember
that the next time you think ham radio is passe!