44Net

In my last post I shed some light on how I feel there are good things being funded by the ARDC, but in the end its not really changing a whole lot.

It's origional inception was loaning address space to hams. And when you read their page:

"The goals are to of advance the state of the art of Amateur Radio networking, and to educate amateur radio operators in these techniques."

It's not clear what people are doing within the space. Is any of it aligning with the above stated goals? Or is the bulk of address space merely being used as an extension of the internet?

I'm a bit of an advoate for building the 44 intranet (read that again). The internal network. I have pointed out somethings a while back.

I'd also like to see some networking advancements. Are there any hams as cool at Brian Kantor these days, writing new protocols like he did way back when with NNTP? Could hams contribute to a movement to get the rest of the world to better adopt IPv6?

The problem as I see it, is a lack of direction. Identifiying things that ought to happen, (be researched written or built) and matching that with a bounty grant makes more sense to me than doling out the cash when ever club wants to have an ARES trailer.

Meshtastic

Years ago I had built a 900 MHz analog repeater. Mostly to learn about the propagation, and because my friend in Milwaukee needed someone to build a 900 MHz repeater. So I built two. Mine was a lower power, the lower profile one on my tower at home.

So anyway when friend or two brought up messing with Meshtastic on 900 MHz, I was like sure because I already have spare antennnas and other things. The other part is because we were never able to deploy a wideband (useful) mesh network here due to the terrain and a lack of sites. So this is sub GHz, where things are more forgiving and there is a lot of multipath. It's also narrowband (less useful transport though), so the signal strengths can be less, etc.

So far its been interesting. And I want to read more about doing codec2 over it. I'd also like to see more technical information out there. Receiver (BER) performance data. Reviews of the Chinese amplifiers. Are they harmonic spewing junk, or decent. If I was the ARRL, this is what I would print in QST in place of the endless of traditional HT product/equipment reviews.

Speaking of that, this is exactly the type of thing I'd like to see in a 5 watt handheld. Repeater sites are getting hard to obtain and maintain, so if you can just use everyone else to relay your signal that seems ideal. If this was something M17 could do, I guess I'd be more interested in it.

On another topic, I filed FCC reply comments, but honestly I don't have a lot of hope. That is why I kept my effort in the matter brief. For the amount of time I spend communicating with government officals (mostly in vain), there really should be a way to write off the time I am waisting on my taxes. Maybe then with that mechanism they would get off their duffs.

As usual the ARRL's comments did not impress me. They are still beating the emcomm drum, and have some sort of Winlink penchant. If they wanted no bandwidth limits for HF (which doesn't seem like the best idea), then why did you seek 2.8 KHz, and thus waste the FCC's time? And once again they don't seem to give a rip about VHF/UHF.... yet those are the most idle bands and bands of use to commerical interests.

So while I haven't had much hope for the ARRL, the ARDC I had hope for. And honestly I am losing that as well. There really needs to be a guy like Wayne Green with some vision. I have written the ARRL about the concept of bringing back the future systems committee, but they are to busy sinking their own ship it seems. I really think the ARDC needs to take a survey or form a committee to identify benefical technology the community could use. And then offer bounty grants to make it happen. The bulk of the grants they give really don't do a whole lot to potentially change the present amateur radio dynamic. To do that you have to have vision and also get things into peoples hands.

I mentioned M17 before. Does anyone know how many radios are flying off the Connect Systems shelves? Jerry has always been fairly open about things, perhaps one of the video podcasters could interview him on the M17 matter?