22 Mar
2014
22 Mar
'14
6:31 p.m.
Hi All,
I seem to have accidentally stirred up a can of worms here but it does
show that the information available to 44net newbies like me is not
available in a form or location where we can get at the basics.
Historically speaking hams have always had a source of information
available at all levels of expertise. Mention was made of morse keys in
one post and I can remember almost every ham magazine had articles on
how to build your own morse key in step by step fashion when I first
started in amateur radio.
This is not the case now.
Even after a fair search on the internet I haven't been able to find
even a basic mud map of how the 44 net all fits together. I don't mean
a degree course in networking, there is plenty of information I can
assimilate on that subject, but more a simple schematic saying you are
here, and this is what you need in principle to interact with the 44 net
without opening it up to attack and abuse by non hams.
When I started out I learnt a lot about transmitter construction by
copying and building other peoples circuits and layouts. When I had
learnt sufficient to have some confidence in my own designs, I then went
on and published them, first off in local club magazines and then in our
national magazine.
As another post mentioned this doesn't seem to be the case these days.
Lots of people are beavering away in private doing their own thing and
rather selfishly not letting anyone else know what is going on so they
can least try to join in.
On packet my main forwarding partner has as his address
xxxx(a)amprnet.org. So how are my packets launched through normal
internet space reaching him? I don't know and I can't find out how or
what the precautions or limitations of traffic for this cross connect
may be. I don't want to trash anyone's internet data allocation by
accident in as much as I saw a post here mentioning 1GB as the figure.
As far as writing php/html or whatever, or any other form of
documentation, when I have at least a basic understanding of how it all
works I will be only to eager to contribute to help other newbies
however at the moment my full contribution could only be "Duh Duh".
If the gurus don't take time out from their innovative projects to at
least write up a little bit of basic information, then the trend of most
hams saying "it's to hard and to much work to find out the basics of 44
net use" will continue and the amazing allocation of the 44 address
block will probably disappear back into the greedy maw of the general
internet due to gross under use.
Many Hams started out as youngsters building commercial electronic kits.
From there they fostered an interest in electronics and
progressed to
ham radio.
Perhaps what is needed is a basic kit to get newbies fired up. I
noticed that a Michigan club has done this for Jnos in the form of a
script that performs all the (hard) parts of the jnos set-up and
presents a simple form type menu for setting the station specific parts.
It's pretty restrictive but it gave me a good start in showing how a
basic jnos install should be configured and I happily went forward from
there.
Could something similar be done here. Perhaps a raspberry pi distro (for
example) which presents a form to set all the station specific bits but
which looks after setting up all the other requirements automatically.
In this way the integrity of the 44 net could be protected by having
some one who knows what they are doing help with the setup script in the
distro whilst at the same time offering a simple and cheap enough way
for most hams to at least start to become involved.
Regards
(still in the dark)
Tony VK3API