[Milsurplus] WS-19 groups

[J. Forster]

OK, since Henry put this out there. Here's the story:

The "original" WS 19 Group is out of Canada (mostly Ontario). I was a
member, but they were pretty up-tight about OT posts (ie: not WS 19 stuff)
and other things. After a dispute with Bob Cooke, a number of people were
tossed out or bugged out of their own accord. These included Chuck
Counselman (W1HIS), Keith Watt (in the UK), and myself.

I formed a Yahoo Group, but had problems with the Yahoo interface, so
Keith started the UK Group with Chuck and I as Moderators. Chuck got busy
and eventually faded from Group operations.

In order to increase membership (partly to outdo Cooke's Group), I
conceived of a Manual Archive aqs a honeypot. This was made easier by an
offer on the old MilVehicles list of free web hosting on the Trackpads
site. Many of my personal archive of original dcuments were copied and
scanned and formed the basis for the first several hundred documents in
the Trackpads Archive.

Eventually, the Trackpads owner decided he needed the web space for his
own stuff, so Keith moved the site to a different server. It was about
this time that Alister Mitchell from Scotland came into the picture as
another Moderator.

Keith was insistant that all the scanned manuals be password protected, to
prevent their theft and sale on eBay. There was an attempt from mainland
China to get the passwords for large numbers of manuals, which I spotted
and stopped, but Keith and Alister continued to worry about document
theft.
This led to the current kludge of a system and the restrictions that
manuals can only be requested from physical ISPs. You cannot, AFAIK, get
manuals from a Google, Live, Hotmail or any other free ISP address. It has
to be something like Comcast, Verizon, etc.

BTW, this is utter nonsense. In long discussions with a former college
classmate, who recently retired as the chief IP attorney of a Fortune 100
company, since the originals are all public domain, any scans, no matter
how they are cleaned up or improved, are public domain. They contain no
original material. Only, if new material were added, would copyright
attach, and then only to the new material. Thyw WS 19 Group Archives are
clearly public domain.

I always believed that the mil manuals were public domain, and the
information in them should be preserved and made as widely available as
possible. (The information, not necessarily the physical artifact). That
was the core of my argument with Watt and Mitchell and I got turfed out of
the UK WS 19 Group for it.

If anybody is interested in WS 19s (and almost any other Mil Radios), I
invite you to come on over to the ArmyRadios Group on Yahoo.

That's probably far more than anybody wanted to know.

FWIW,

-John

======================

> Hi Lloyd
>
> There's actually two WS-19 goups, the original one in
> Canada which Meyer, W2FU mentioned and a second one in the UK.   My own
> personal experience is that the Canadian group is much "cozier" and I and
> others I know have had some odd (to put it diplomatically) reactions from
> particularly one of the leaders of the UK based group.
> The Canadian group is quite accommodating and they wont chew you out if
> there's a snafoo when you download manuals and they will not exclude you
> if you mail in innocent  humorous anecdotes.
>
> I'm also a WS-19 MkII fan and I run mine  as a QRP CW rig.
> Was also one of my first rigs back in the 50's - mostly Army Mars CW and
> AM (AA2UOC).
>
> 73 Henry, OZ1UF (ex K2UOC)
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