Plan A
 

What we've been doing wrong with digital ham radio - and how to get back on
track.

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

Charles, N5PVL

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 03:45:08 GMT, Charles Brabham wrote:
What we've been doing wrong with digital ham radio - and how to get back on
track.

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm


I see you failed to fix any of the glaring errors that were
pointed out over on Eham.

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 03:45:08 GMT, Charles Brabham wrote:
What we've been doing wrong with digital ham radio - and how to get back on
track.

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm


I see you failed to fix any of the glaring errors that were
pointed out over on Eham.

Here to there wrote in
:

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

A link to these errors, if errors they be, would be nice :)

--
Panzer

Here to there wrote in
:

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

A link to these errors, if errors they be, would be nice :)

--
Panzer

Panzer240 wrote in news:Xns95C07467293C6fw190a8@
198.80.55.250:

Here to there wrote in
:

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

A link to these errors, if errors they be, would be nice :)


Never mind :) Found it myself :)

--
Panzer

Panzer240 wrote in news:Xns95C07467293C6fw190a8@
198.80.55.250:

Here to there wrote in
:

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

A link to these errors, if errors they be, would be nice :)


Never mind :) Found it myself :)

--
Panzer

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 03:45:08 +0000, Charles Brabham wrote:

What we've been doing wrong with digital ham radio - and how to get back on
track.

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

Charles, N5PVL

Very interesting. I read the thread over on eHam and some of the comments
raised some important points. If those folks are correct, then that will
be discovered as the software is developed and the system debugged.

Personally, I would like to be able to assemble a medium speed LAN
capable of 128k to 384k speeds running in the 900 MHz band. I was piqued
by the ZigBee announcement yesterday on Slashdot where it was mentioned
that one of the bands to be used is 902 to 928 MHz @ 250 kbps. Adapting
such a technology to ham radio would be cool. Out here in the sticks we
would gladly trade down the bandwidth for the extra range we could achieve
on 900 MHz over 2.4 GHz.

I agree that too many hams have bought into the notion that an amateur
radio digital network must necessarily be a replacement for the Internet.
If that were so then HF phone would have died long ago since it wasn't a
replacement for AT&T. I say use the Internet but develop fun stuff on ham
radio. After all, part of our charter is experimentation even if it
results in some re-invented wheels. :)

73, de Nate

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 03:45:08 +0000, Charles Brabham wrote:

What we've been doing wrong with digital ham radio - and how to get back on
track.

http://www.uspacket.org/plan_a.htm

Charles, N5PVL

Very interesting. I read the thread over on eHam and some of the comments
raised some important points. If those folks are correct, then that will
be discovered as the software is developed and the system debugged.

Personally, I would like to be able to assemble a medium speed LAN
capable of 128k to 384k speeds running in the 900 MHz band. I was piqued
by the ZigBee announcement yesterday on Slashdot where it was mentioned
that one of the bands to be used is 902 to 928 MHz @ 250 kbps. Adapting
such a technology to ham radio would be cool. Out here in the sticks we
would gladly trade down the bandwidth for the extra range we could achieve
on 900 MHz over 2.4 GHz.

I agree that too many hams have bought into the notion that an amateur
radio digital network must necessarily be a replacement for the Internet.
If that were so then HF phone would have died long ago since it wasn't a
replacement for AT&T. I say use the Internet but develop fun stuff on ham
radio. After all, part of our charter is experimentation even if it
results in some re-invented wheels. :)

73, de Nate

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."

Nate Bargmann wrote:

Personally, I would like to be able to assemble a medium speed LAN
capable of 128k to 384k speeds running in the 900 MHz band. I was piqued
by the ZigBee announcement yesterday on Slashdot where it was mentioned
that one of the bands to be used is 902 to 928 MHz @ 250 kbps. Adapting
such a technology to ham radio would be cool. Out here in the sticks we
would gladly trade down the bandwidth for the extra range we could achieve
on 900 MHz over 2.4 GHz.

Keep your eyes peeled for AT&T/NCR WaveLAN 915 hardware.
They made ISA cards and PC-Cards, and these were basically
an Intel Ethernet controller glued to a 2Mbps 915MHz DSSS
radio, running around +24dBm (250mw).

The ISA Card used an external antenna, while the PC-Card
had an "antenna module" which was actually the radio.

Though it's now quite difficult to find motherboards
with ISA slots, the ISA card is pretty interesting from
an experimentation point of view - you have access to the
barebones hardware and can tinker with the protocol. The
Ethernet controller on the ISA card was an 82586, the
controller in the PC-Card was a much simpler Intel controller,
the part number escapes me. In 1995, I developed drivers
for Solaris x86 for both of those cards and was quite
happy with the performance.

I recall that BSD and Linux had drivers for these cards,
so you could probably get started without much in the way
of documentation.

I never did any long-range outdoor linking with WaveLAN 915,
but I did read reports of 5-10 mile point-to-point links
done with directional antennas. I've done 12 miles with
802.11b on 2.4GHz (under Part 15 rules), so 10 miles with
this WaveLAN gear sounds reasonable.

Cheers -
Dana K6JQ