We had one great 2meter 'linked repeaters' qso.London England/Williamson, Wv via the link that echolink provided. He was driving around there pretty much doing what i was here in Wva.just running some errands. We got into a very nice qso and he was doing pretty much what i was only he was in London. His audio was perfect and i thought he must be right here in the area with me. I thought he was maybe in the area vacationing. I was out in the country here locally running errands and i heard a ham with a British accent give his call on the local repeater. It is one fantastic linking tool i'll have to say. So, do you agree, or am I a biased lunatic?Д¬lick to expand.You're not a biased lunatic.but you're not seeing the big picture either.Д®cholink is just a tool. I couldn't fathom sitting in front of a laptop with a headset and purporting to be playing radio (with exceptions to SDR obviously, someone send me their Flex 5000A, thank you). To a certain extent I tend to shake my head as I see new amateurs being suggested to sign up for this service because I believe it's a discredit to what the hobby is they're playing Internet, not radio. I tend to lump Internet-linked repeater systems into this same category as EchoLink. The other digimodes and SSTV and it's variants I believe to be part of ham radio, as they all use RF exclusively for their contacts, and not routing data via the Internet. I lump EchoLink into the same category as E-Mail or Skype. EchoLink egresses multiple hops and networks to allow users to speak to those who use RF at some point or not at all for VOIP->VOIP.Д®choLink to me is auxiliary to ham radio but is not a part of ham radio itself.

I absolutely do not wish to insult.ДЄs the title suggests, is EchoLink ham radio? My view is no, it is not, simply because it relies on an infrastructure which is not purely RF nor do you have any control over it. These are solely my views which I would like to discuss to see if they are in agreement with others in the Amateur Radio community. First, let me preface this with I have absolutely no desire to insult nor demean EchoLink users.

Internet echolink ham radio