Re: Does Winlink do more than text messaging?
"Rick Muething" <rmuething@...>
David,
Winlink has tried over the years to support all viable new
technologies. This has included Pactor 1, 2,3, 4, WINMOR (which was
developed by me for Winlink and provided to others free of charge) as well as
VHF Packet and D-Star (128 K baud).
FYI Winlink is run by a small team (about 6 or so) of all volunteer
programmers and administrators. The cost of running the Winlink system (servers,
software, licenses etc) is all covered by private and a few corporate
donors. Of course the bulk of the Winlink infrastructure is provided
by the hundreds of dedicated sysops (HF and VHF/UHF) donating their time and
equipment.
I have offered source code (VB.NET and C.NET VS 2010) and help (coached)
several other developers but unfortunately many do not have the skills or more
likely the commitment to finish ports to other platforms and support those
ports. Debugging, documenting and supporting this kind of code does take a
real commitment.
We fully support efforts like the Universal Digital Radio and plan to
purchase several when they become available and will work to add this if at all
possible to the protocols supported by Winlink and also hope to use it to
provide non internet bridging across existing packet networks. While the
initial costs may seem high it is important to remember the production volume of
ham radio specific hardware (like TNCs) is always small compared to commercial
or consumer gear. Hopefully with acceptance and volume costs can be
driven down. But we definitely need to push to expand this component of
the Ham radio technology.
We look forwarding to evaluating the Universal Digital Radio and hope other
volunteer programmers will be encouraged to help integrate it into the Winlink
network.
Rick Muething, KN6KB Winlink Development Team
From: qrv@...
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2012 12:27 PM
Subject: [UniversalDigitalRadio] Does Winlink do more than text
messaging? Now that APRS is available for HF, not to mention a dozen No virus found in this
message.
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