karn (03/09/83)
To John Opalko: Aw, come on, gimme a break! John's comments are precisely the kind of input the FCC has been looking for from non-hams. I'm sure that John and others like him would be an asset to amateur radio given the kinds of activities he's involved in. The least you could do is offer him some encouragement; I doubt your "comment" would be taken as seriously as his if you filed it with the Commission. Phil Karn, KA9Q/2
mahler (03/10/83)
After reading Mr. Gilmore's open letter to the FCC serveral thoughts come to mind. For brevity they are enumerated below: 1) There should be a NO-CODE license, BUT I don't consider it a canidate as a class of as a class of AMATEUR RADIO SERVICE. I would be happy for the NO-CODE folks to have a separate frequency allocation. 2) NO-CODE is supposed to bring on the air a number of people with "great" contributions and those who can bring those ideas to life. Can 5 WPM code be a significant hurdle to an "interested" person, if it is maybe the person isn't that intereseted. Mr. Gilmore by his addmission lost interest quickly. 3) John, your talking in this forum to ALOT of software folks. I don't think its a great discovery that current RTTY software is very primative. It was designed to be upward compatable with other amateurs old equipment. Not every one can run right out and by a computer, although that time is getting very close. Remember its amateur RADIO, -NOT- amateur COMPUTER. 4) I am concerned about your statement that your machine will retry, and retry, and retry if the conditions are poor. Sure you can put in retry counts ... but what if I am trying to handle priority traffic on that frequency ... will your system go off the air at my request ... so I can work the priority traffic your station can not hear. What do you think will happen the first time a life is lost because a digital station did not QRT (thats stop transmitting). 5) I want a digital world wide computer network, but not at the expense of the amateur radio service. -- Steve N9DRR