Regarding the input Rick received that Winlink isn't real .... Then I guess the ARES/RACES groups all over the USA that are using the Winlink radio e-mail network for emergency preparedness -- including the portable HF/VHF digital station that's running in a room adjacent to where I am right now -- are not real, either. Just a figment of my imagination. (Hmm. Maybe I really did over-do it in the 1960's.) The last posts by Dick and Rick have a common theme: the effects of agitation and propaganda by prominent individuals, who may or may not know what they are talking about, on the opinions of hams who do not know what *we* are talking about. Opinions are so much easier to hold when they are unblemished by blunt-force contact with facts. We are within a month of our National Convention, when all of us who wear the red badge can expect to be button-holed on this proposal by a great many hams with questions, comments, rants, flames, and confusions -- some honest requests for clarification and some distorted arguments that originated in a galaxy far, far away. Whatever our personal opinions may be on the latest iteration of the proposal, each of us has to arrive in Dayton with a firm two-handed grip on the facts of the proposal as it now stands and the principal intention or concept that underlies the proposal. We can't wait until the night before the July Board meeting to try to sort this all out in our heads. That may mean re-reading the documents that led up to the current proposal as well as the last EC Minutes, reading all the stuff on our web site related to the proposal, and then asking questions -- as Tom, for instance, has done -- when something is still not adding up. I look forward to reading the response to Tom's query. I don't relish the idea of looking like a doofus about this proposal at our National Convention, and so I have studying to do to feel as sure as possible that I know what I'm talking about. Some people may need to do less homework than I do, some people may need to do more. But we all have to do it, and the clock is ticking. 73 - Kay N3KN