April 27, 2007 18:52
jagasail Wrote:And the disadvantage over Sailmail (and Airmail) is the rather limited network of HF stations. Fine if you're cruising to the Caribbean or maybe the Med, but with only a single Pacific station in New Zealand, it won't hack alone - you'd still need either Sailmail or Airmail for an HF/SSB email solution. So why incur the additional cost?
Well you can certainly remedy that...
find a couple of people in the pafic willing to host stations and have them join the association. The cost to setup a shore station is about $3000 for the wardware + the time it takes to get a license. Since there are no computers at the XNet hf stations there is no management to be done. Just turn it on and let it run. I have had my 2 xnet stations running for 1.5 years and look at them maybe once a month to make sure a radio hasnt broken.
Here is a link the bylaws which explains the profit sharing benefits of joining the association.
http://www.xnetmail.com/association_bylaws.htm
There are no stations in the pacific because no one has shown an interest to expand the network. If you want to use your Mac with HF in the Pacific then I personally empower you to make it happen.
--luis
Luis Soltero, Ph.D., MCS
Director of Software Development, CTO
Global Marine Networks, LLC
StarPilot, LLC
Tel: 865-379-8723
Fax: 865-681-5017
E-Mail: lsoltero@globalmarinenet.net
Web: http://www.globalmarinenet.net
Web: http://www.starpilotllc.com