[ih] Comments re the packet radio discussion (Ham Radio branch)

[Lawrence Stewart]

Jack Haverty’s story is great.

I hadn’t made the connection between NTS and the Internet until I read it, even though my experience was like his. I was in NTS through high school and even, for a while, TCC station K on Wednesdays until we moved to noisy radio conditions in Florida.

The additional note I have is about collision detection!  If you were lucky enough to have QSK, or full break-in, you could listen between the dots and dashes, and the receiving station could break in, requesting an immediate retransmission of the last word.

IIRC I built a vacuum tube transmit-receive switch that let me listen using my dad's war surplus HF receiver while transmitting with my own Heathkit.

So it functioned much like collision detection on early Ethernet, letting you detect another transmission at the same time you were transmitting.

-Larry/K4EO