30 Aug
2006
30 Aug
'06
11 p.m.
On Wednesday 30 August 2006 16:54, Tony Duell wrote:
I've never seen a US amateur radio license, but
the UK one says that the
license is for 'self training in wireless telegraphy'. Now, I will
happily agree there's a lot more to wireless telegraphy than making
transmitters and receivers, but I am a little curious as to what 'self
training' you get by buying a transciever, buying a TNC, plugging them
together (and presumably use the standard 'rubber duck' aerial of the
portable transceiver). Oh, and running pre-written software to talk to
the TNC.
I'm pretty sure that the US one doesn't say anything like that.
Also, in the US, we're a bit farther along than using ham radio only for
sending morse code...
There's nothing wrong with buying equipment, but
IMHO you really should
be thinking about doing some experimentation, modifications, and so on.
Actually, one reason I've never got into packet radio is a lack of
information one the internals of the TNC. I've not found an 'open' one --
as in published schematics and ROM source listings.
Well, there's a software-based packet radio module in the Linux kernel.
There's some details about it in the AX25-HOWTO:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/text/AX25-HOWTO
Perhaps you could use that to figure it out. ;)
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing -- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcac