DIGITAL CONNECTION
Should You Care How Your Message Moves?
When you call CQ, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to understand the mechanism of how your signal gets to be heard. You don’t need to really understand the physics behind it all, it’s sufficient to understand that you press a button, and your properly connected wiring allows your antenna to scatter your signal into the ether. But now consider a telephone call: Do you really know how your signal gets to the other end? While it is likely to be a mixture of technologies, the real question is, should you care? As long as you can get Grandma on the phone, all is well.
The point is, it isn’t necessary or even sometimes desirable to understand a technology as long as the application layer (e.g., a full-duplex audio circuit) does what it’s supposed to. It just works, and that’s enough. This sets us up for a discussion of the TARPN packet radio network.
TARPN, What’s It Good For?
I’ve written often about TARPN (Terrestrial Amateur Radio Packet Network <>), and interest and networks continue to grow. But many start out wondering what good it is, a so-last-century technology whose replacements are far superior. Sure, folks still cling to AM, and CW shows no sign of becoming any less popular
