[TenTec] Merger

[Jim Allen]

It's hard to justify getting into that market right now I would think.
There is too much experimentation, too much make do with Linksys and other
stuff, to know just what direction things will eventually go.

The Coronado ham club had gone into that fairly strongly, with a couple of
very talented fellows, and when I left had a system in place linking the
fire station, the EOC, the hospital and other key point that featured an
uninterruptible internet link, and even a link down to the Marina complex
south on the Strand.  There are other groups in other areas figuring out
how to get going with networks, but figuring out what devices to offer etc
would be scary right now.

73 de W6OGC  Jim Allen


On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Stuart Rohre <rohre at arlut.utexas.edu>wrote:

> I just heard a talk, post Dayton, by one of the ARRL vice Directors. ARRL
> is hopeful for this merger to work to the benefit of hams, and for CQ to
> emerge from its restructuring as a viable magazine.  CQ appeals to a
> segment of ham radio, (contests) that varies from the ARRL contest
> participants with some overlap.  But CQ magazine devotes more in their
> magazine to their sponsored contests and those of overseas sponsors.
>
> ARRL records show a steady growth in new hams, and League membership grows
> as new hams enter the hobby.  Recent and  younger ham retention is a big
> topic at the League, and stimulation of further interest in the hobby;
> especially among the young and middle age "Makers" is also a big topic.
>  The league has an active youth component at each large convention, with a
> special subset of their booth devoted to that.  It seemed to be well
> attended at Ham Com in greater Dallas, (Plano) last year.
>
> The league has furnished seed money to stimulate Broadband Ham Net (tm),
> the up and coming digital and microwaves revolution in ham emergency
> communications.  This is based on Mesh networking, where a spread out
> community of hams can provide multiple paths across a city that suffers
> phone outages, or overload.  Hamnet can simultaneously transmit the ARRL
> Handbook text in 2 minutes,  while supporting a VOIP phone system and live
> video from an incident scene.  In other words, it has more bandwidth,than
> packet like systems could ever dream of.
>
> That might be a technical area that no commercial manufacturer is directly
> serving.  Hams are presently cobbling together systems from other
> commercial wideband antenna hardware and network boxes such as Linksys
> surplus routers.  New work and software has appeared for off the shelf "at
> the antenna" routers such as the Bullet devices.  A vendor who can serve
> the ham's questions and package a turn key "Kit"
> would be offering something no other ham supplier has attempted.
>
> -Stuart Rohre
> K5KVH
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