by Andy Nemec, KB9ALN

Happy summer to you all! As I write this in late May, we've just come off of a week of rain, with a rare good-weather weekend in the offing.

It will probably be too nice to do any antenna work, though. As any truly experienced amateur knows, antennas only work correctly when they are installed in weather that is barely tolerable for human exposure! But enough small talk, on to the issues at hand.

New E-Mail Address

First off, I do indeed have a new EMail address. Carrying out a threat made at least 2 years ago; I have changed providers and am now broadband-equipped. Please note the new address: kb9aln (at) tds (dot) net

For anyone who should have gotten the word, but didn't, I apologize. As always, I appreciate hearing packet news from anyone who has anything to report.

There is also some other news concerning me, and the level of activity you'll see in this space. Certain health considerations have forced me to drastically cut my workload and extracurricular activities, so to speak. Folks that know me well also know that I have a lot of irons in the fire, and am now forced to pull some of them out.

I fully intend to keep up with the news segments in this space, but will have to put the feature articles on hold for a while. I have had positive feedback from a few folks about these articles (though don't know how many people actually do read them). I'm sorry to anyone who finds them interesting to read.

The other thing that will be affected is the WAPR web site. It is a lot of time and work to update everything, and right now it will have to wait. If someone is interested in maintaining a WAPR Web site, I will certainly be glad to supply all of the material that was on the former site. If you have this interest, please drop me a line via E-Mail.

Regardless of whether someone else does this, the web site will eventually return, along with the feature articles, when this health challenge has passed.

I have been reading with interest a lot of flood messages on the BBS concerning hams and WiFi, as in 802.11b wireless ethernet. There is a little debate about implementing them as a replacement for VHF 1200 bps regular use service. Imagine that, a debate on packet radio!

This was kind of a timely introduction of the topic, from our perspective. We've had 5 feature articles on the subject and we'll doubtless hear more about it. But what was interesting was the evolution of the discussion. A near-consensus among the discussion's participants was reached. They all eventually agreed that the technology is great for some uses, but people who are distant from a BBS (or not line-of-sight to it) may not be able to use it. They decided that there is a place for both and that it can nicely augment an existing BBS or nodestack.

This is certainly something that BBS operators and even casual packet users may wish to investigate. It doesn't have to be "one or the other", rather it can be both.  If you're experimenting with any newer technologies like this, drop me a line. If you'd like to write an article relating your experiences, by all means, you're welcome to do so here.

That's all for this time out. Until next time, 73 from Andy.

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