[OZAPRS] Gating DPRS to APRS

[Hamish Moffatt]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 08:22:51AM +1000, Zik Saleeba wrote:
> 2) (Paraphrasing) "The IP on the vocoder is closed". This is true.
> However the vocoder chip is available and cheap so it's not a big
> deal. There's nothing stopping amateurs from making homebrew D-STAR
> radios. Some already have. The downside is that a closed vocoder
> algorithm is annoying for people working on SDR. Various amateurs are

I have to disagree that "it's not a big deal." Closed modulation schemes
limit our ability to experiment, which is the fundamental reason for
amateur radio. They can't be implemented by amateurs for SDR, and can't
be used as a basis for future improvements. Basically all we are allowed
to do is operate them.

PACTOR-3 is closed too and I'm opposed to it for the same reason.

> b) It uses only about 8kHz bandwidth rather than 16+kHz for analog FM.
> In Japan where the airwaves are packed this is big news. Here it's
> handy because it means we can potentially  slot D-STAR repeaters in
> between the FM repeaters making twice as many repeaters available.
> (I'm not sure about elsewhere but in Melbourne I'm told we're out of
> 2m repeater slots)

Personally I would be more interested in a suitable digital voice scheme
for HF. FM quality is already good; digital would be a bigger
improvement over SSB than FM.

> d) The data service isn't here yet but it will give us mobile internet
> capability with decent bandwidth. It's much better than anything of
> this kind readily available to amateurs right now.

Would this be legal to use, and even if so why should we be providing
internet access over the radio? I think amateur radio is best used for
things that can't be delivered commercially, not just as a freebie
alternative.


Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish at debian.org> <hamish at cloud.net.au>
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