[Myrddin]

There are limits to what you can put over the air as a ham. It is also a government licensed service. Part of that arrangement allows the government to essentially conscript the operator and his equipment in the service of the government under an "emergency". Most of my gear is still in boxes after moving from San Diego to Idaho. It would take time to pull it out and make sure it is operable. The electrolytic caps can dry out and become non-functional. They sometimes explode when exposed to current after a long time of non-use.

When I was last regularly active, the packet revolution had just arrived (1985). I enjoyed TCP/IP over ham radio in those days. The rise of the internet made the ham radio based comms just a silly toy. Can you imagine having to wait 3 weeks to move 1 megabyte of data over a very lossy radio path? The modem data rate was only 1200 bps with lots of overhead to create the synchronous packets that carried the AX.25 UI frames that wrapped the IP datagrams.

[Disambiguator]

Can you imagine having to wait 3 weeks to move 1 megabyte of data over a very lossy radio path? The modem data rate was only 1200 bps with lots of overhead to create the synchronous packets that carried the AX.25 UI frames that wrapped the IP datagrams.

Ok, I just read and understood this passage. I guess I'm a geek? :^)