The FCC was/is asking for comments on their hurricane response this last season. They want to know what they did right, wrong, and what they might do better next time. Some of the comments filed are copy pasta from someone who has no concept of what digital modes are, what they are not, and what today's technology is actually able to do. The derp is strong with these. There is also an obvious effort to promote Winlink being orchestrated by the developers. I feel like I should correct some of these poor/ridiculous comments but I'm not sure I'd do it in a way that would not make the authors look like morons:

FCC Docket 17-344 comments

Do it anonymously.

Can you cite the derpy ones? Im not going to wade through pages of comments to find shit to refute.

Also interested in the winlink stuff. Its not miraculous but it does sort-of work. It mainly needs more bandwidth/speed/stations to be useful. I.e. pactor 3 capabilies out of your sound card mode.

The derpy ones generally start off with "I vehemently oppose allowing broadband digital modes on any amateur radio frequencies. Winlink is a broadband digital mode. Ergo, I hate Winlink. Derp, Derp, Derp."

Winlink is only one of several modes for transferring e-mails. fldigi has a similar mode that I think is called flmsg. Also, there is a software modem called Vara HF modem which claims to have slightly better than Pactor 4 speeds (which are nearly double Pactor 3 supposedly). Neither flmsg nor Vara are proprietary like Pactor 3/4 and Winlink.

And, none of those take more than 2.4kHz to do their thing, no more than voice SSB. So, none of them are broadband, including Winlink.

Were the symbol rate limits lifted, smart folks would develop far better software modems that could improve thruput, reduce susceptibility to noise, and keeping or reducing bandwidth requirements.

That's one of the reasons why I'm suggesting there be a "high data rate" digital HF channel or 3, a "low data rate" digital channel or 3 (like for PSK31, MT-63, Olivia, JT65/JT8/WSPR/etal), an HF voice calling frequency, and several voice frequencies on several bands. I would make these "new" frequencies/bands "interoperability" frequencies similar to what 60m is now. But rather than 5 channels on one band, have 10 channels on multiple bands, some lower, and some higher in the HF arena. When I was in PR, 60m was in and out, same with 40m and 20m. You guys know as well as I do because you were on the receiving end of all that. (I was on the noisy end that almost couldn't receive anything.)

I'm also suggesting there be a known HF public safety frequency that any public safety organization can access if everything else goes to crap. Like it did down there.

Just want to add one more e-mail mode - PSKmail.

Hadn't seen that one before. May have to check it out. When I was deployed, I could do PSK31 fairly well to most places. Of course, it wasn't 100% copy even on a good day. If they've come up with a way to do arq and send e-mails, that would be realy good. If I read right, it only uses a max of 500Hz so no different than Olivia 16/500. And, much less than the 2.5kz needed for Winlink.

It would be interesting to test the various methods of HF e-mail transfer to look at how good the different software is, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Would definitely be a good article for QST and would help the emcomm community too.

Neat,

I need to check those modes out, how well do they deal with weak signal conditions, thats my main draw to stuff like pactor. Also do they have the infrastructure that winlink does in terms of folks running nodes?

And yeah, I'm sure the Derp Derp brigade just wants all their voice BW or more of it. I actually don't think dividing up part of the allocation specifically to data modes/CW/Voice is a bad idea. We already split voice and CW/data and I think a smaller watering hole for CW is a good idea so they don't have to deal with interference from digimodes.

Yeah I was reading some.  The primary problem I have with the ARRL & Winlink responses are that they conflate baud/symbol rate with bandwidth.
In case someone is not aware of the difference:
Symbols rate is how fast you can send meaningful symbols.  In computer communications this called baud rate.  Sending the ascii char A ten times a second is 10 baud.
If using Morse code sending 10 letters per second would be 10 baud.
If bandwidth is limited to, for example, 1200 Hz and your equipment is capable of sending 300 symbols per second and someone else's equipment is capable of sending 4800 symbols per second over that same bandwidth then neither are using any different bandwidth but the 2nd equipment is going to deliver the message using less air time.
In other words, to have signal rate limitations for digital modes is the equivalent to saying that nobody can talk faster than a certain number of words per second on SSB.
That doesn't mean that we can't have bandwidth limitations defined for digital modes.  More on why that's a good thing below in italics.

As hams we have a small but significance difference from the communications requirements of most other digital services.
We are *required* to facilitate the "Man in the Middle".  Any person is supposed to be able to listen in and understand the message we are sending.
That doesn't mean that we can't have messages that include protection of message integrity and we can also have protocols that support non-repudiation.
But the message has to be readable by third parties.  Which should preclude any use of proprietary protocols that have not been opened to the public.

Below is what I wrote to someone that has been involved in presenting to the FCC against expanding bandwidth for digital modes during both the current comments to the FCC and the previous effort 2 years ago.
But I will write against the current proposals.  Not because I entirely agree with you.
But because I believe that the FCC and other actors are going about this wrong wrong wrong.

1. As useful as PACTOR IV modems were reported to be in PR I believe that their use as broadband transmissions that cannot be intercepted and read is against the spirit of licensed amateur radio.
In the same vein I believe that FCC limits on signal rates should be eliminated.  Because with their elimination then with the ingenuity of hams we will figure out better ways to send more data in less bandwidth and usable by a broader base of people than only those that can afford expensive proprietary hardware.
2. The FCC should consider imposing bandwidth limitations by transmission mode.  Nobody gets any more than what either AM or SSB voice gets now.  Data, to encourage efficiency, should probably be somewhere between voice & CW.  I'd need to think much harder on what bandwidth I'd support.  I'd need to see some spectrum usage analysis over a period of time.  Anybody doing other wise is just making a SWAG.  
3. The FCC should NOT take over the region's bandplan.  Why?  Because violation of a Federal Regulation can lead to a Felony level conviction that would automatically impose loss of Constitutionally protected rights.  I'm not willing to go there.  And that I'll learn how to fight with every tool I have available.  If you don't think that could happen let me know.  I'll find real references.
4. If problems have been documented with either winlink or any other amateur use then they should be addressed appropriately.

The #4 item was a concern in our exchanges because reported problems with winlink gateways and other automatic calling digital systems creating spurious emissions or other problems.

That's not what I remember from school.

Baud rate is the number if transitions or individual changes per second.

When we had 300 baud modems (yes, I had one in my Commodore days!), we got about one 40 character line of text per second because under that signalling standard, baud is roughly equal to bits per second.

In more advanced vector based digital communication systems, bit rate can be significantly higher than baud rate since one transition may indicate a multiple bit sequence - one signal pulse may have various amplitude, frequencies, or phase angles so one transition may represent 01, 10, 010, 011, 0110, etc.

Baud rate and symbol rate are synonymous. The number of bits per symbol (or bits per baud) defines the raw data rate.

Examples: BPSK has 1 bit/symbol, QPSK 2 bits/symbol, etc.

Well, turns out PSK mail basically has a 3 man user base in Europe. And the other mode looks like its point to point modem, which is great but not email like winlink...

I saw where flmsg can be used as an email gateway. For pskmail, I suppose that if 2 people were already on a psk frequency, they could initiate pskmail and exchange e-mail with 100% copy, assuming the band conditions have any kind of decent propagation. Seems like a Raspberry pi with your choice of pskmail, flmsg, or vara on it would let you set up an email gateway without the expense of Pactors.

If you really want them to go cross-eyed, tell them that CW is digital. ;-)

Couldn't D-RATS be used over HF?

The nice thing about D-RATS is that it can be set up so the sender just fills out a form and the data is sent.  The receiver already has the form, so the data is parsed into something meaningful upon receipt.

Of course the obvious down side is that only Icom makes D*Star HF gear at present.

Essentially, if you use the Winlink forms, that's exactly what Winlink does. Cuts down on the amount of data to be sent.

Winlink clearly has a larger user base but I'm not sure how long that will continue, particularly if the FCC uncaps the speed limits. There are far faster/more efficient techniques to transfer data accurately but they cannot be legally used right now.

I'm interested to see how this whole thing plays out. It could be the FCC does things that will re-invigorate amateur radio. Or, they could do nothing. I think the FCC saw how valuable HF was when all other forms of communication went TU simultaneously. If they're smart, they'll recognize that a malicious rogue state could cause the exact same thing to happen over a large swath of CONUS. Hopefully seeing a microcosm of that in Puerto Rico put the fear of God into them and FEMA/DHS about real emcomm enough to get off their duff and Make Amateur (radio) Great Again.

This is right along with what I was thinking in the wake of the hurricanes and the "interoperability" exercise.

If they actually want gov/amateur interop for disaster response, they need to allocate some additional frequencies, and do it in a way so that people will have the capability to use them if needed. Right now 60m is so limited and restricted that most don't bother to get set up for it. Gov/mil stations have high power and giant broadband antennas so they can go anywhere at will... amateur stations do not. At a minimum they need some additional space on 60m, and to eliminate some of the kooky restrictions like having a single digital signal centered in a channel, when you can fit 30+ FT8 convos in a single SSB channel bandwidth. IMO the next obvious step would be to allocate at least a couple of interop-only channels somewhere near the 30m band, to allow that band for emergency voice traffic. Then some interop channels just below the 40m band, so that emergency traffic can get away from the international broadcast QRM in the amateur voice allocation. Same with a few designated interop channels just above 75/80. These extra channels need to be very close to the amateur allocations so that antennas that people have will cover them... MARS used various channels like that.

And, if want to do a REAL interop exercise, instead of on a random weekend in November, have it the last weekend in June. Give 500 bonus points on your FD score if you get complete copy of a broadcast message and another 500 for checking in on the follow up regional net. If you want people to be set up to use 60m, this will make it happen.

As far as Winlink, that is literally the only thing I hear from government emergency management types, to the degree I don't even want to hear it. There are better solutions if they would pull their heads out of their behinds. I went to a meeting where they were actually discussing running winlink over 2m voice repeaters, I kid you not.

For local emergency response I have what might sound like a kooky idea but I think it would be awesome. 4g high speed data using the 70cm ATV channels. Just need the equipment to do it. There are designated 450ish MHz bands for 4g already in use in some parts of the world, so it's not even that far out of an idea.

A really kooky idea is to reallocate the 70MHz/4m/TVch4 band. Have a regular weak signal band that aligns with the Euro 4m band, and use the rest for long haul datalinks.

Well....

I just quit my podcast and resigned my ARES post to allow me Moar time to do 'stuff' like this.

Now to figure out where that time that I was using elsewhere has gone so I can channelize it back to the pre-cast ham version of myself.

I keep hearing about 'ARDOP' and what little I've read on it, I'm still a lot confounded by it.  That's all I can offer this thread-sorry

Just started testing APRS HF Messenger has some potential.

http://www.crosscountrywireless.net/aprs_messenger.htm

It seems I was quoted by a Government official - Linkee

I'm assuming that is a good thing. It least it means one person read it.

Hopefully, changes come from it. Your experiences regarding that have almost pushed me into Pactor 4.

Almost.