From: paulf@w6yx (Paul Flaherty)
Subject: Re: Errors in the ARRL Digital Committee's Report
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 00:37:38 GMT

Jay.Townsend@f3.n346.z1.spk.wa.us (Jay Townsend) writes:


>Well you have discovered the problem and now you should understand and be able
>to fully support the position of the Digital Committee.  Lack of coordination
>and channelization.  And your solution can only be obtained by requiring a
>control operator on one-half of the circuit.  "Good Amateur Practice" can only
>be ensured when WE listen on a frequency before firing off.  

Wrong.  Clearly CW and SSB cannot coexist in the same band segment.  Clearly
repeater and simplex FM and sideband and CW cannot exist in the same band
segment.  Band segments are *not* new, and are designed to reduce contention
between modes.  The need for a control operator is an obvious millstone to
any sort of automated network.

>Channelization is the only other solution and it has been rejected as a concept
>due to 1) It only works for a few 

We currently allocate spectrum for EME and other weak signal modes.  There
are very few hams with the financial and technical wherewithal to run an
autoforwarding link properly.  Moreover, the number of links needed to
support the entire amateur community isn't very large.  So, it only needs
to "work for a few".

> 2) There isn't enough spectrum

It will take less than 10% of the WARC bands, or less than 1% of the HF
amateur allocation, to support an operation which a fairly large portion
of the amateur population makes use of.

>3) Who is going to assign the channels ? FCC, ARRL, ME, YOU.

Frequency coordination has been done for years by independent organizations.
It's not a pretty job, but it does work.  There is precidence for coordination
on HF with 10m repeaters.  So again, nothing new here.

> 4) Foreign
>Phone bands (which BTW was the reason for the strange plan in RM 7248).

Not a problem with the WARC bands.  The allocation would be the low 10 kHz.
Much to the contrary, having the automatic unattended autoforwarding operation
in one small chunk of spectrum would probably be welcomed by most
administrations.

>You are right that 150 Baud Packet would be better as well as all of the other
>suggestions.  Have they been implemented? Tried? Sure they have, but I haven't
>seen much new equipment.

Most of this is old hat to people in the professional world.  CLOVER is very,
very good for amateur work (let alone professional systems).  If you
subscribe to CQ, there was a very good article on CLOVER as well as other
HF digital modes in the May 1992 issue.

>The lack of specific modes is good.  The ability to try different things seems
> good.

Nothing in my proposal contradicts this; in fact any specifics about what
actually goes through those channels should be left to Good Amateur Practice
and nothing more.  The only problem with using experimental transmission
systems is that most administrations lack the ability to monitor such
operations and would object.  In any event, there is plenty of spectrum for
systems proving out there.

>But contrary to all of your arguments it is my
>experience that many if not most packet operators run LSB using 2.4 Khz
>filters.  

Go back and read what I wrote.  What you say is true, but entirely
unnecessary and not unique to unattended automatic autoforwarding.

>Nah, not really.  You are all concerned about moving messages with exact
>replication and many of us Digital guys are a lot more interested in having a
>QSO with a friend.  I'll give you an example.  Its a contest and I am beaming
>240 degrees and its 0530Z.  I copy 2BW and it looks from the garble to be a
>five letter call.  I am a lot better than the computer (tho K1EA's program
>might also guess it).  A22BW for a triple multiplier.

Sad to say, but the days of human superiority in signal detection are pretty
much over, if you have the right equipment (which is getting cheaper all
the time) and software.  The only significant "development" is that all
of this is finally being applied in the Amateur Service (which is more of
a function of economics).

Don't get me wrong; I have a soft spot in my heart (some would say head) for
Model 15s.  But the portion of the ham population which uses the
autoforwarding system is considerable, and it doesn't require tons of spectrum
either.

--
-=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX/5W1JX  |"Anyway, nothing can beat Good Old American
->paulf@Stanford.EDU          | Know - How." -- Harry Canyon, _Heavy Metal_