[Elecraft] ESSB- What About Pactor III?

[Julian G4ILO]

On 8/13/07, W2AGN <w2agn at w2agn.net> wrote:
> Everyone gets into such a high dudgeon about ESSB, but I see no one here
> complaining about PACTOR III, which is a proprietary mode which takes up the
> same bandwidth as a SSB signal, but is allowed in the "data" parts of the bands,
> INCLUDING 30M. Not only that, but it is employed by dozens of "robot" stations,
> whose purpose is to pass EMAIL on the Ham Bands. This is a lot more threat to
> the bands than a few experimenters playing with ESSB, since the ARRL is pushing
> the email forwarding, or "Winlink," as the "be all, end all" of Emergency
> Communications.

Many digimode enthusiasts do get annoyed about PACTOR robot stations.
But mostly the digital modes each keep to different areas of the
digital sub-band and there is not very much conflict - unless you're
using some new mode somebody has just written a program for, in which
case you aren't welcome anywhere. :) Excepting contests, there is not
usually any trouble finding a clear frequency to operate on in the
digital sub-bands. The number of phone users is probably orders of
magnitude greater than the number of data users so the potential for
trouble if a new wider band sort of phone catches on is far greater.
-- 
Julian, G4ILO K2 s/n: 392  K3 s/n: ???
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