I will reinforce what Bud has said. Not all hams live in urban areas with broadband internet access choices. I live in a fairly rural county here in Oregon, and while a great place for fairly low HF noise levels, many that live here do not have access to broadband of any kind except for expensive satellite service. I'm very lucky that I live close enough to town to have Comcast cable available at a reasonable 50 Mb/s download speeds. A few more miles away and it's nothing. On the other hand, it seems modern laptops barely have a serial port on them any more, let alone a CD or DVD drive. (Now, where did I leave that 5 1/4 inch floppy with the bandpass filter design program on it? ;-) 73; Mike W7VO
On January 22, 2020 at 7:50 AM "Hippisley, George (Bud), W2RU, (Dir, RK)" <w2ru@arrl.org> wrote:
Barry, Diane, Staff —
As you evolve a delivery policy for electronic documents, please permit me to throw one thought into the hopper:
Some Members — including this Director — live in rural areas that are, to be as kind as I can be, “internet-challenged”. Our service is still worse than that found in many, if not most, 3rd-world countries. Whatever is chosen as the League’s “next-gen" delivery mechanism(s) must take that into account.
I am relatively fortunate in that my search for a retirement QTH suitable for ham radio communications also makes it possible for me to have internet access via a 4-mile line-of-sight path to our county-sanctioned Wireless ISP’s node. Most of the folks in this part of my county are not so lucky, and the terrain around their homes forces them to use satellite internet — or drive 20 miles each way to park with their laptop in the Burger King parking lot.
The issue for us “country folk” is not so bad if we’re talking about small and medium size downloads — it’s the big stuff that is of concern. My path to my WISP’s tower is good for 40 Mbps but their “fairness” software and backbone constraints throttle it down to anywhere from 2 - 10 Mbps based on time of day and total data downloaded in a “short" period. An 8-GB upgrade of macOS for my MacBook Pro last month took much of a day and evening for me; for my neighbor with satellite internet, it would have to be an overnight download to avoid exceeding monthly satellite day / evening quotas.
Also, from my own experience, any download mechanism that you select for delivery of magazines, handbooks, etc., must incorporate automatic “re-try” and “continue” capabilities, because our rural internet connection is unlikely to stay “healthy” throughout the complete download of a large file.
Meanwhile, I keep an 11-y/o laptop on hand for accessing material that comes to me on DVDs. DVDs and thumb drives are perfectly fine in my home — and I actually prefer them, but I recognize the extra mailing cost that the use of tangible media implies. However, there is presumably also an incremental cost for additional server capacity and bandwidth when large documents are delivered to a large membership that way, so I express no opinion on how cost-effective the various delivery methods may be.
73 — Bud, W2RU
> > On Jan 22, 2020, at 7:12 AM, Shelley, Barry, N1VXY (CEO) < bshelley@arrl.org mailto:bshelley@arrl.org > wrote:
Fred:
From my perspective, there is no real need to assign a question like this to a Board committee. All you really need to do is ask either myself or Diane and we will look into it and get back to you. Then we can have a discussion and, if it warrants a committee's involvement, we can decide at that time.
On this one, if you would allow me a little time to talk to the staff and do a little research, I would appreciate it. I agree with Ria, thumb drives present security concerns but I'm guessing there may be a way to deal with the issue.
And just an observation, it's 32 degrees this morning in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.....the Visitors Bureau lied!!!
73, Barry, N1VXY
--------------------------------------------- From: arrl-odv <arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org mailto:arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org > on behalf of Fred Hopengarten <hopengarten@post.harvard.edu mailto:hopengarten@post.harvard.edu > Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 11:43 PM To: arrl-odv <arrl-odv@arrl.org mailto:arrl-odv@arrl.org > Subject: [arrl-odv:29437] CD of 2019 ARRL Periodicals on DVD
Colleagues:
Today I received “Amateur Radio Contesting for Beginners” by K1DG, and a CD of ARRL 2019 periodicals – on DVD. I am somewhat grateful.
Query: Is distribution by DVD the modern way to distribute periodicals? Wouldn’t it be better, and cheaper (?) to distribute on a USB stick? No laptop, Kindle, iPad, or mobile phone in my household can read a DVD.
To which committee is my query best addressed?
Fred Hopengarten, Esq. K1VR
Six Willarch Road
Lincoln, MA 01773
781.259.0088, k1vr@arrl.org mailto:k1vr@arrl.org
New England Director
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Serving ME, NH, VT, MA, RI and CT
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