Comment by tlrobinson
8 years ago
There’s a balance. One valid reason to not want ham radio systems to be too reliant on the Internet is disaster situations where the Internet might not be available. In that situation it would be better if the repeater network was entirely RF based.
Sure, if your local ARES group doesn't want to use internet repeaters that's totally fine and probably the right call for them(although I'd argue that you can hamWAN any of the internet linked repeaters as well).
The thing that really grinds my gears is the complete dismissal of anything digital/internet connected as not being worth your time in ham radio. It's actively driving away people who would help drive the state of the art of radio forward(97.1b,c,d).
I agree.
HamWAN looks really cool (I wish we had something like it in the SF Bay Area).
I'd argue that repeaters linked over something like HamWAN are "RF based", they just happen to use internet protocols, and that's great IMHO.