[CW] WINLINK 2000 / PACTOR PESTS

[Brian Carling]

Dear ARRL CEO, David Sumner,

Recently, the WINLINK PROMOTERS/PROPONENTS asked that all their Winlink users write 
to the ARRL to keep their annoying Winlink wideband (Pactor 3) operations on the 
30 meter band. 

The ARRL had wisely recommended the deletion of such operations on that band for 
US licensed Amateurs. 

After some pressure from that small group, and as a result, the ARRL 
Executive Committee rescinded their original recommendation to delete 
wideband digital operations on 30 meters.

Please stop this annoying source of QRM from all over the HF bands!
They NEED to be restricted and contained, NOT expanded down into our precious 
CW sub-bands and onto the 30 meter band.

I am requesting:

1. That their bandwidth space NOT be expanded for digital modes greater than 500 Hz, 
and that robot, "semi-automatic" operations NOT be allowed outside the current 
sub-bands. Semi-automatic (robot) UNATTENDED operations are always initiated by 
human beings who are supposed to be listening before they transmit. However, 
they cannot hear both ends of the conversation and they have NO idea how much 
QRM they are causing, as has been documented in numerous complaints to Riley 
Hollingsworth, by CW ops, and other digital mode stationms that have been impacted.

2. The track record shows how ineffective any interference mitigating 
steps have been by WINLINK / PACTOR stations over the past few years,
and because so-called "sophisticated signal detection" usually CANNOT hear 
nearby stations on HF, that WINLINK be further restricted to narrower sub-bands or 
taken off the HF bands below 30 MHz entirely. It is a false premise to say that 
QRM can be avoided by those initiating the connection listening carefully before 
they transmit. Those of us who have observed these robot stations and their BAD 
behavior on HF know first hand about the ineffectiveness of this method.

3. Use of Winlink 2000 for many of the users, is primarily as a means of 
avoiding commercial internet charges for access via satellite from remote locations.

4. I am sorry that ARRL has promoted WINLINK so much when it is a bandwidth hog and
a nuisance to many of the users of other modes, both digital and analog.

5. The HF bands are NOT suitable to crowding in a few very wide modes.
Voice modes may be digitized within a signal that is only a few kHz wide,
and there are other digital modes that are just as effective as WINLINK 2000
yet do not cause careless QRM or eat up huge slices of bandwidth.
Please help to put it on VHF and UHF where it belongs.

Sincerely,

Brian Carling, AF4K

CC: ARRL Division Directors:
Frank M. Butler Jr, W4RH
Sandy Donahue, W4RU