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Re: CQ

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On 1/7/21 8:05 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 1/7/21 11:22 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> Well, I still hang out here but I am not every active.
> 
> I've been subscribed to the newsgroup for quite a while.  But my message 
> was the first one in my servers 2+ year history in the 
> alt.ham-radio.packet and free.packet.radio newsgroups.

Prior to this the only traffic I have seen in any of the ham radio
groups has been garbage telling people (repeatedly ad nauseum) to
visit a web site to read about what they posted as a topic.  Worse
than the last packet I saw which was DX Cluster Broadcasts.  (which,
technically, should be illegal as they are broadcasts!)


> 
>> To the best of my knowledge there is no AX.25 activity anywhere around 
>> me. (Heck, I can't even find an active 2 meter repeater within my range.)
> 
> I'm sort of surprised that there isn't a 2m repeater in range.

So am I as I live a mere 20 miles from Scranton, PA, a major city.
But it seems most of the repeaters have gone away and many of them
seem to have reduced their coverage area.  Even when I hear one
(not often) it is usually not reachable with any of the gear I
have.  And I have set up a scanner to cover all the 2 meter packet
freqs and never hear a thing.

> 
> I'm also a little surprised that there isn't any APRS activity.

I see local (well, within 10 miles of me) APRS activity if I look
online, but I have yet to figure out just what APRS is supposed
to be doing.  Not sure I want everyone to know where I am all
the time.

> 
>> I miss the days when I ran digipeaters on mountaintops and saw massive 
>> amounts of traffic.
> 
> I know of digipeaters.  Though I'm evaluating Net/ROM vs ROSE for 
> something I'm thinking about doing.

Played with both.  Think ROSE would have been nice but it never
caught on and never saw the activity that would have helped it
develop into something really usable.  NETROM is OK but has a
few warts, too.  Howie-Code would have been nice, too,  but it
got even less attention that ROSE. The only things I ever saw
it running in were my DR-200 digipeaters.  I tried a few times
to get the firmware from PACCOmm but, apparently, they lost it.
I contacted Howie Goldstein N2WX a couple times but could never
convince him to release any of his code.  Too bad really because
it was a decent idea.Oh yeah, and then there is also TCPIP but
that kinda faded with real TCPIP on the Internet.  I assume by
now my address allocations are all gone.

> 
> I think that Net/ROM might be nicer in that it has automatic routing vs 
> ROSE which is completely manual routing.  

If it had a chance it might have developed good routing, after all,
it is using the same concepts as the phone system and that seems to
route connections pretty well.  But it died on the vine just like
the rest of Packet Radio.

>                                            Though I like the fact that 
> ROSE is actually X.25 implemented on top of AX.25.  At least, as best as 
> I can tell.

Implementing AX.25 on top of X.25 seems rather silly as they are the
same basic protocol with differences to meet legal limitations.
ROSE is the OSI Networking concept running on top of AX.25  instead
of X.25.  There are lots of good reasons to use OSI but in the industry
TCPIP beat it out.

> 
> I'd sort of like a private X.25 cloud.

Not exactly sure what that means, but then I am not a fan of
"The Cloud" so it could be something simple I miss.

> 
>> I had a  lot of stuff I thought would be interesting with AX.25 but it 
>> seems everyone else got bored of it and with the advent of the 
>> Internet all but gave up.
> 
> *nod*
> 
> One of the reasons that I got into ham radio was the communications 
> ability that didn't depend on the Internet.

I saw that as a good idea, too.  But even in limited environments
it met a lot of resistance.  Back in the days before AX.25 I was
a big RTTY guy.  Probably because I did it professionally in the
Army for many years.  I was a Class C MARS station in the north
of Germany on my last tour there with the Army (1977-1979).  I
spent many nights relaying traffic from other remote MARS Stations
and the Gateway Station in Pirmasens, Germany.  When I came back
to the states I didn't continue with MARS.  Then after my Army
time ended and I was back home and doing packet including running
digipeaters with connections all over New England my dad, who was
a MARS operator and had seen my packet stuff (I once connected to
a VAX in central NJ from his home in Wilkes-Barre, PA using 1200
baud packet) asked me to come down to the PA MARS Conference at
Carlisle Barracks and talk to them about the capabilities of AX.25
in their environment.  I did.  I talked about the ability for
MARS, in conjunction with the Corps of Engineers, who have remote
radio sites all over the United States,  to set up a functional
data network not reliant on the phone system and that would remain
functional even during disasters.  They were impressed and convinced
me to join MARS again.  I did.  Less t6han a week after I got my
MARS Operating Permit I was contacted by the local (NEPA) MARS
Manager and told he was not interested in any network I had in
mind and he was the boss so I should just drop the iddea completely.
I never joined a net or filed a monthly report and my membership
eventually expired.  Remember what I said about NIH?  The same
was true when I tried to get TCPIP activity among the local Ham
Community. The had W0RLI BBSes (which actually were nothing but
existing old tech re-invented, badly) and had no interest in
anything more modern that CW.

> 
>> And don't get me started on the strong NIH syndrome that infected it. 
>> At least around where I was.
> 
> I don't get the Not Invented Here mentality.  I've long been a fan of 
> standing on the shoulders of giants.

See above.  :-)

bill
KB3YV
FN21hj

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Thread

CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-01-07 10:55 -0700
  Re: CQ Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2021-01-07 13:22 -0500
    Re: CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-01-07 18:05 -0700
      Re: CQ Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2021-01-08 08:31 -0500
        Re: CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-01-08 09:32 -0700
  Re: CQ j01 <j01@tty7.org> - 2021-01-12 17:46 -0500
  Re: CQ Daniel <me@sci.fidan.com> - 2021-02-02 00:14 -0800
    Re: CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-02-02 12:11 -0700
      Re: CQ Daniel <me@sci.fidan.com> - 2021-02-04 08:36 -0800
  Re: CQ Andy Valencia <vandys@vsta.org> - 2021-02-02 07:55 -0800
  Re: CQ Daniel <me@sci.fi.dan.com> - 2021-07-18 00:00 -0700

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