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* H E A R D I S L A N D D X - P E D I T I O N *
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* PILOT PROGRAM MESSAGE # 9 *
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* HEARD ISLAND AND INTERNET *
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To stay in contact with the DX-community, the Heard Island
expedition uses the pilot station concept, originally
conceived by W0CP, and used extensively during the Peter 1
expedition. Seven pilot stations will make sure that the
DX-community is well informed about what happens and will
feed back all the relevant information to the expedition
The written news releases about the Heard Island expedition
are sent to the DX-community both via Amateur Packet Radio
(to the BBS's and to the DX-Clusters all over the world),
as well as via internet. In addition, daily news broadcasts
on 75 m will be organized by the pilot stations.
Some of the readers may get it via Packet Radio(only), so
it may be interesting for those to find out how it all
works on internet.
What follows is written especially with the non- (not yet?)
internet users in mind.
PACKET VS. INTERNET.
If your BBS is connected to a Packet network, it is likely
that the Heard Island News will be available on your BBS.
It may take a while to get there though.
How does the new gets there? ON4UN, the pilot coordinator,
writes the "world-wide" news, and sends it to the 6 area
pilot stations by internet (e-mail). It is there within
minutes. At the same time he sends this world-wide news
plus the local (area) news to the area BBS network and to
the Packet DX Cluster network in Europe.
The world-wide news consists basically of three parts:
1/ Hot news: information from the island, questions from
and answers to the DX community.
2/ Generic information: everything you may want to know
about this expedition.
3/ "Who is Who" in the Heard Island team. Every day we
will publish the CV of two members of the expedition
and support team.
Local news, is news that is only of interest to certain
regions, e.g. schedules for Europe, a report of propagation
last night into the West Coast on 160m, etc..
The 'area' pilot stations, copy the world-wide news as
received from ON4UN, add their own *local* news, and
release the total news package on their DX-cluster and
Packet Radio BBS networks. The local news is always
identified as such (e.g. "Heard Island News for the US West
Coast").
Readers of these news bulletins can of course send
observations (very welcome!), remarks or questions to their
local pilot stations. The pilot stations will, as a rule,
send no individual answers to all mail received. The pilot
will use the observations and remarks to make his daily
report, which he will send to Heard Island. The most
interesting items in these reports will of course be
related to propagation (when, where, how strong, what
direction), and how the operation is being assessed by the
DX-community (are they doing well?). Some of your questions
(most I hope) will be answered in the next news bulletin,
if at least there is a general interest in it.
This communication back and forth can happen via your BBS
(if your pilot station has a BBS), or via the DX-cluster.
What does internet give us on top of that?
On internet we reach the DX-community via two different
ways:
1. VIA THE HEARD ISLAND REFLECTOR ON E-MAIL.
E-mail is a BBS system, world-wide, very fast, but only a
BBS system. A reflector is a system on E-mail, whereby the
contents of a mailbox can be read by all those that have
subscribed to the reflector. This means you can send a
question to ALL the subscribers of the reflector, and you
can expect an answer from any number of them. It groups
people with a common interest. It allows all those
interested to read all the mail that circulates through
this mailbox.
There are a number of amateur radio related reflectors on
E-mail, e.g. the contest reflector, the top-band reflector,
the DX-reflector etc. etc. Starting Dec. 15, we will also
have a HEARD ISLAND reflector on internet. In order to
become a subscriber to this reflector, you have to send an
E-mail to a specific address (the person who runs the
reflector). Details will be repeated regularly on our daily
news bulletins.
The great benefit of such a reflector is that all the
subscribers can follow the discussions and exchanges of
ideas that take place on the reflector. This is certainly
an added dimension as compared to the Packet Radio BBS
system and the DX-clusters. The other advantage is of
course speed, and universality. Internet is a world-wide
net, and it reaches any place on earth within seconds,
which of course cannot be said of amateur Packet Radio
networks.
The daily news bulletins (both the world-wide news as well
as the local area news) will be made available on the Heard
Island reflector. We allow anyone to copy these news
bulletins to other reflectors. However, the pilot stations
will NOT read mail on other reflectors. They will only read
return-mail on the Heard Island reflector.
The address of the Heard Island reflector is:
heard@ve7tcp.ampr.org
To subscribe to the reflector send a message to:
heard-request@ve7tcp.ampr.org
containing "subscribe" in the body . You will get a mail
back asking confirmation of your subscription and
instructions on how to do it.
2. VIA THE WORLD WIDE WEB
The world-wide Web is in essence a one-way communication
system, although many WWW pages have links to E-mail. Both
E-mail and the WWW make use of the same digital information
highway, called internet. The WWW is where the internet
addicts "surf". The WWW is where unlimited information is
available, and that includes all the information on the
1997 Heard Island expedition.
The Heard Island Web address is:
http://www.ccnet.com/~cordell/HI/
If you want to access the hot news (news bulletins, updates
at least once a day), the direct address is:
http://www.aurumtel.com/hnews.html
This Web site (called the Heard Island Tribune) holds all
the bulletins and lots of digital pictures that were taken
the same day you discover them on the Web. It also has
links to the main Heard Island Web site (see above) as
well as to the Log Server (later more about it).
The KK6EK Web site, (http://www.ccnet.com/~cordell/HI)
stores all possible data on the expeditions such as the
Heard Island Manual (everything you may want to know about
the expedition, and much more!). It not only stores text,
but also pictures! The plan is to have live pictures from
Heard Island on the Web. This Web site has been active for
several months now.
But both Packet Radio as well as Internet will provide more
service than as described above. Users of these systems can
also consult the log from Heard Island. No more guessing
"Am I in the log? " You can check yourself. In a few days
you will receive all the details about the LOG server.
73
Your pilots: ON4UN, N1DG, W0EK, K0EU, W4WW, W2IJ, JH1ROJ
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* H E A R D I S L A N D D X - P E D I T I O N *
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* END OF MESSAGE # 9 *
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* Dec 30, 1996 - The Heard Island Pilots (intern.txt) *
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* H.I. INTERNET ADDRESSES *
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*Heard Island reflector: heard@ve7tcp.ampr.org *
*Heard Island WWW site: http://www.ccnet.com/~cordell/HI/ *
* http://www.aurumtel.com/hnews.html*
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