Marlon,
While I appreciate your interest in understanding more about the
hobby of ham radio I don't think you understand the nuances.
The "communications" with others around the world is part of
it but it is a LOT more than that. Calling someone on the phone
or sending email has no "thrill" associated with the effort. It
is EXPECTED to work very reliably because of the telecommunications
infrastructure. But there is NO excitement--it is much like the
old line about kissing your sister. Or like catching fish in an
overstocked pond, or even shooting fish in a barrel.
Much of the joy of ham radio is about the hunt, "stalking" stations
to talk with through the "jungle" of the ionosphere. You never know
who you will talk with or even IF you will make a contact. And the
opportunities vary from time of day, to seasonally, and to where
we are in the sunspot cycle.
While many hams don't build all of their own equipment they do
assemble their stations and don't rely on ANY global infrastructure
for the communications. It is like the difference between looking
at the Grand Canyon from a commercial airliner at 35,000 ft to
actually rafting down the river in the canyon. The difference between
watching the Discovery channel and going on a month-long expedition
into the deep woods.
Hams have adopted the internet because we are technically oriented
and it provides a lot of great support infrastructure. But it is not FUN
in the same way that building a station and actually operating your
own radio and seeing what the gods of propagation allow on that day.
Let me try some other analogies. Would golf be fun if you ALWAYS
shot par? (BTW I am NOT a golfer -- never found it particularly interesting.)
No, it is the challenge of seeing how well you can do on a particular day.
Same with my previous fishing analogy--it is NOT fun to always catch
the limit in a few minutes or hours and have fish for dinner every day.
It is all about the challenge of STALKING the fish. And IF you catch one
it is all the more sweet if you did NOT catch one the last time out.
Hams are NOT against Broadband--only against BPL. It does nothing
but duplicate other broadband capabilities that have existed for some
time while running the risk of destroying a critical part of the radio
spectrum. Since the capability already exists through DSL, cable,
satellite, WiFi, etc, it makes no sense to "trash" the radio environment
because some groups want to make some money because they
missed the boat when it came internet accesss.
There is a LOT more at stake in the HF spectrum than ham radio--
the hams just happen to be the most vociferous. HF also includes
military communications, short-wave broadcasting, radio astronomy,
etc. All potentially subject to being overrun with "trash" from BPL.
Fortunately for the users of the HF spectrum I think the "rush" to
BPL will be less than expected. There are too many other issues,
such as how well it works during a lightning storm--just the time
when I want to access weather.com for up-to-the-minute weather
maps. And even how well it will work with the broadband noise that
the power companies already generate due to poor maintenance of
their lines.
There is already LOTS of unused fiber infrastructure and that combined
with microwave WiFi makes so much more sense that I really can't
understand why the US power companies have jumped into a
technology that has already been rejected by many other countries.
I have to believe that it is a combination of naivete among the
power companies and the hype from the equipment manufacturers
who want to make a quick killing with IPOs and don't really care
about the long term.
It will be interesting to see if the power utilities have hit the mother lode
but I believe that they will not find this to be the answer to their CFO's
prayers but rather a disaster to their stockholders.
John Brosnahan W0UN
Signal Hill Research LLC
At 09:10 AM 4/28/2004, Marlon Schafer (509-982-2181) wrote:
?????
Guys, what's part of the magic of being a ham? Cheap real time
communication with others all over the world right? Broadband allows that
and more. And for less money than you are spending to do it today.
I'm not a ham but I am a broadband provider who uses wireless as one of the
tools to do so. I think in a way, I'm a lot like you guys. *I* installed
another system to service a new community last night. People were so fired
up they kept coming around asking when they could get hooked up while I was
working on it. Very cool.
I'd think that the goal here shouldn't be how to stop BPL or any other
broadband mechanism, but how to limit the damage to yourselves. There's too
much money and too many consumers affected to think that it's stoppable....
I'm fascinated by the Ham community thoughts on this though.
laters,
Marlon
(509) 982-2181 Equipment sales
(408) 907-6910 (Vonage) Consulting services
42846865 (icq) And I run my own wisp!
64.146.146.12 (net meeting)
www.odessaoffice.com/wireless
www.odessaoffice.com/marlon/cam
----- Original Message -----
From: <k2qmf@juno.com>
To: <AB2OS@att.net>
Cc: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] BPL: Presidential Backing
>
> Another good reason to NOT vote for Bush............
>
> On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:19:44 -0400 Alan Beagley <AB2OS@att.net> writes:
> > Yes, the technical standards need to be changed to allow BPL: require
> >
> > all power lines to be shielded.
> >
> > Alan AB2OS
> >
> >
> > On 04/27/04 09:06 am Eric Rosenberg put fingers to keyboard and
> > launched
> > the following message into cyberspace:
> >
> > > From the President's speech:
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > . . . There needs to be technical
> > > standards to make possible new broadband technologies, such as the
> > use
> > > of high-speed communication directly over power lines. Power lines
> > were
> > > for electricity; power lines can be used for broadband technology.
> > So
> > > the technical standards need to be changed to encourage that.
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless
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_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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