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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

No, the endpoints are communicated through radio but they are linked using a system similar to VOIP.

Then why don't you just use the internet in the first place, and skip the license and expensive equipment?

Ya I agree (as a ham). No point in using internet linked repeaters as a reason to get into ham radio. If you have a ham radio, sure, play around with it, but it is kinda pointless. It doesn't exactly teach you how to communicate when the internet doesn't work. -K0COW

Just because they're connected to the internet doesn't immediately invalidate their use. We've got the PNW DMR network up here[1] that gives you tons of coverage where cellphones don't[2] all through a linked repeater system.

We had an emergency a while back where someone got stranded up on the mountain due to a flat tire and they were diabetic so it was an urgent situation. In that case just hitting one repeater they were able to raise anyone in WA state that was listening vs just the local repeater.

Ham radio is a different thing to different people so just because you don't see value in it doesn't mean that others don't find it interesting and a reason to get into the hobby.

As a younger ham it's super frustrating to see this attitude whenever anything internet and/or packet related comes up that people dump on because it's not the thing that they enjoy.

[1] http://trbo.org/pnw/index.html

[2] http://trbo.org/pnw/images/heatmaps/WA-Combined.jpg

Hold your horses. The thread is a response to a comment suggesting the ability to speak to someone in Australia over the internet as reason to get into HAM. Nobody is "invalidating" anything.

Yes, but the comment was specifically that any internet connected repeater was useless as an entry into the hobby.

There's an attitude throughout the certain parts that if it's not fm/cw/ssb then it's not "real" ham radio. As far as I'm concerned anything involving part 97 equipment that would get you fined by the FCC without a license qualifies.

I know a ton of smart, accomplished people who would love to spend more time in the hobby on the digital side, but when they run into this attitude it just ends up driving them away and hurts the hobby as a whole.

There’s a balance. One valid reason to not want ham radio systems to be too reliant on the Internet is disaster situations where the Internet might not be available. In that situation it would be better if the repeater network was entirely RF based.

Sure, if your local ARES group doesn't want to use internet repeaters that's totally fine and probably the right call for them(although I'd argue that you can hamWAN any of the internet linked repeaters as well).

The thing that really grinds my gears is the complete dismissal of anything digital/internet connected as not being worth your time in ham radio. It's actively driving away people who would help drive the state of the art of radio forward(97.1b,c,d).

I agree.

HamWAN looks really cool (I wish we had something like it in the SF Bay Area).

I'd argue that repeaters linked over something like HamWAN are "RF based", they just happen to use internet protocols, and that's great IMHO.

True, but you are not going to be able to use 2m/70cm/1.25 to talk to people over vast distances.

While EchoLink doesn't have the same visceral feel that a radio has in your hands, it can be interesting. By connecting those repeaters to EchoLink I can directly broadcast on them. Which is pretty fun.

The other day when it was snowing like hell in Chicago I had a nice chat with a mobile ham using a 2m repeater on the big island of Hawaii.

I think I can understand part of the reason why - it's kind of a gatekeeping device. You're guaranteed to meet someone who at least has one interest similar to yours, and someone who's gone through the trouble of getting a license and a radio. It's not like going to ChatRoulette and clicking around until you get tired of seeing genitals.

For (practically) any given interest, there's a way to find someone else with the same interest somewhere else that you can ask to Skype with.

Sure, but that's not as fun as the, uh, "organic" connection you can make over radio.

He's wrong. You don't need to use the internet to talk to someone from Australia. Using HF radio you can talk all over the world just using the Earth's ionosphere.

Or V/U/SHF - there's this big, passive repeater in the sky known as the Moon.

(Earth-Moon-Earth communication, or moonbounce, is basically to aim your antennas at the Moon and blast as much RF as you can muster at it, in the hopes that someone will pick up your echoes as the arrive back at Earth 2.5 seconds later.)

Anyone having the Moon over their horizon at the same time as Australia does should have a fair shot at working an Aussie at 144MHz and above.

I thought it was a nice example of new stuff in Amateur radio. In retrospect I should have mentioned the new digital modes.

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