Previously, I had emailed Mike Miller, who was the person who responded to me on the TCFMC forum, alerting him to the status of the node. There was no response over the last week, and the status of the node hasn't changed.
So, now I put another post on the forum, and included my contact details.
That's pretty much all that I can do at this point. When I mention it on the air, all that I hear is "I don't really ever use it". Well, it 's not really there for local people to use. It's there for people outside of the area to access the repeater. Local people can just use their radios. There are scenarios where it would be useful to access the repeater from a smartphone when you're local, though.
Here's a scenario: someone travelling through town has no idea what the repeater frequencies are, much less the offsets or PL tones to access them. They can pull out their smartphone, however, and connect to the W0EF EchoLink node without knowing any of that. From there, they can get the info that they need to use their radio - like a "normal" ham. Realistically, however, they would just be able to use their phone to look up that info. Also true is that nobody would help them, anyway.
I guess that, until one of the "elder" members of the club has a need or desire to reach the local repeater from out of town, no one in TCFMC will ever see the value of an EchoLink node. Until then, it will continue to be viewed as a suspicious gimmick for people that don't want to use their radio. It's all part of the "things have changed" mantra from these guys.
When I was getting information on the HandiHam repeater network upgrades on the Maple Lake .450 an hour ago, a guy from Florida answered when I threw out my sign. How is that a bad thing? I suppose that a lot of the geezers will say that, if I want to talk to someone if Florida, I should get my General licence and use HF. Well, that isn't really a viable option for me with my antenna situation.
Note to glib idiots: I can't just string up a wire. It's not allowed. I don't have an attic. It doesn't matter to the HOA how stupid that is. Got any other simplistic solutions? I kind of doubt it. I also have neighbours about 20 feet on all sides of my antenna. Will running 100 watts that close to their TV or stereo create a problem? Damn right it will! It's not very "stealthy" when your voice is coming out of their TV while they're watching their favourite sitcom. I am so damn sick of these stupid geezers and their ridiculous 'solutions" when they tell me that I "need" to be on HF.
Do you know what does work for me? EchoLink, dumbass! I'm not contesting on EchoLink, so just toss that stupid response away. Is it different from what you did when you got into ham radio? Sure it is! See, that doesn't make it automatically evil, grandpa. I'm using radio on the other end, aren't I? Yep. Obviously, these fools don't care at all about the constraints I'm under, but I am supposed to deeply care about their misplaced opinions. When they are in the nursing home and aren't allowed to have a radio at all, then EchoLink will be awesome. Until then, it's just a fad and gimmick used by lazy people. Yeah, and I suppose that the internet is a fad and a gimmick used by people that are too lazy to go the library and look up the information they need in books, too. It's not like it used to be, is it?
No comments:
Post a Comment