[Elecraft] PACTOR iii

[Mark Bayern]

>"Your using Pactor to email family and friends. Unless your family and friends are all amateurs, communicating with them was at one time not allowed.

Really? When? Since the beginning of time Amateur Radio has been used
for third party traffic [in the US]. Ever hear of Heath & Welfare
messages after a disaster? radiograms? Just _what_ was the Amateur
Radio _Relay_ League was relaying back in the teens and twenties?


Excerpt from from the book '200 Meters and Down' by Clinton B. De Soto, 1936:

~~~

In 1914, Hiram Percy Maxim of Hartford, Connecticut, was a prominent
businessman, engineer, and inventor (notably of the Maxim Silencer).
He was also an active radio amateur, with one of the best-equipped
stations in the Hartford area. One night in April he attempted to send
a message to another ham in Springfield, Massachusetts. He had a
one-kilowatt station (call 1WH), and Springfield was only 30 miles
away, well within his normal range. He was unable to make contact, and
remembering that he knew another ham in Windsor Locks, about halfway,
he contacted the Windsor Locks ham, and asked him to relay the
message, which was successfully done. This was not the first time a
message had been relayed, but it set Maxim to thinking. At that time,
a great deal, perhaps most of amateur radio activity consisted of
sending and receiving messages, not only between amateurs, but
involving the general public as well. But at that time the maximum
reliable range of a station was a few hundred miles or less, and so
Maxim realized that a formally organized relay system would be of
tremendous use to amateurs.

~~~~


Mark  AD5SS




On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Scott Manthe <scott.manthe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, some of the irritation is brought about something you mention
> casually: Your using Pactor to email family and friends. Unless your
> family and friends are all amateurs, communicating with them was at one
> time not allowed. Amateurs were not allowed to communicate with
> non-amateurs, no matter the mode, excepting for autopatches and phone
> patches. None of these operations was automatic, and a licensed amateur
> was always in control of the transmission. This is not the case with the
> Pactor autobots.
>
> Secondly, and this just my opinion, there is a maritime radio service,
> so why don't you sailors use that to email your family and friends and
> transmit logs and get weather information? Since vessels have a
> dedicated radio service to do everything needed, why pollute the amateur
> bands with maritime communications? There is absolutely no need to use
> the amateur bands for this, especially the autoforwarding stuff. No way
> to justify this, except that sailors have a lot of money and influence
> in both Newington and D.C.
>
> 73,
> Scott, N9AA
>