Amateur (packet) radio...has it's limiations. Here's what I found out as of about one year ago. Perhaps there have been some improvements (see my second and third points). First, you can't use amateur for "business purposes". Many of the hams are quite particular about following the rules to an extreme degree. Second, the system assumes you originate messages from only your home bbs. This is a problem if you are mobile. You can usually originate messages but folks can't get messages back to you. Messages will go back to your home BBS. I wish this weren't the case but this is what I have found when trying to stay in touch with travelling relatives. It just didn't work as I expected. Third, you can only communicate with other hams except for a few bbs machines that will gateway to/from internet/email. I'm not sure how many gateways exists. They fear letting the internet/email onto the packet system as business or profanity may be present. Typically gateways to email are only allowed to/from hams. Other email can't get into the system unless forwarded by an ham. The good news..... The good news is that packet radio is not expensive and you can get onto the system without having to find an RJ-11 jack/landline. I'm just now getting a palmtop-based packet system running and will try to do mobile packet from non-home bbs's. There are regional full time networks that offer near-real-time transfers for short messages. This is the system I will investigate for use on short weekend trips and maybe to/from home during my commute. ...Dennis Henderson, N6TTW
From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH)
Maintained by R. Paul McCarty
Archive created with babymail