I put in an online application for a Notice of Variation (NoV) to my license to run an attended simplex node – which so far hasn’t made any progress. But why shouldn’t I set up a very low power EchoLink node for my personal use so I could make some contacts using my TH-F7E hand-held from round and about the house? Besides, I like my little TH-F7E with its wideband AM/FM/SSB/CW receiver and don’t want to change it for one that doesn’t have that facility. Personally I’m not going to be interested in D-Star until the prices of compatible radios come down and you can buy them from other manufacturers than Icom. My interest in this basic idea was rekindled when I read recently about the D-Star Digital Voice Access Point. But when I realized how much trouble I would have to go to in order to get permission for this I went off the idea pretty fast. Some time ago I thought about setting up an EchoLink node to make it possible to have some contacts on VHF. And although there are several active amateurs in West Cumbria most are “over the hill” from me so I never hear them. Even though I can raise three 2m repeaters there is next to no activity on any of them. I couldn't fathom sitting in front of a laptop with a headset and purporting to be playing radio (with exceptions to SDR obviously, someone send me their Flex 5000A, thank you).If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll probably have observed my comments about the lack of activity on VHF hereabouts. To a certain extent I tend to shake my head as I see new amateurs being suggested to sign up for this service because I believe it's a discredit to what the hobby is they're playing Internet, not radio. I tend to lump Internet-linked repeater systems into this same category as EchoLink.
The other digimodes and SSTV and it's variants I believe to be part of ham radio, as they all use RF exclusively for their contacts, and not routing data via the Internet. I lump EchoLink into the same category as E-Mail or Skype. EchoLink egresses multiple hops and networks to allow users to speak to those who use RF at some point or not at all for VOIP->VOIP.ĮchoLink to me is auxiliary to ham radio but is not a part of ham radio itself. I absolutely do not wish to insult.Īs the title suggests, is EchoLink ham radio? My view is no, it is not, simply because it relies on an infrastructure which is not purely RF nor do you have any control over it. These are solely my views which I would like to discuss to see if they are in agreement with others in the Amateur Radio community. First, let me preface this with I have absolutely no desire to insult nor demean EchoLink users.
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