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<DIV>I wanted to throw this out to the D-RATS user community and possibly</DIV>
<DIV>KK7DS that it is well known that non-hams have been popping</DIV>
<DIV>up on D-RATS occasionally and I have counted at least six so far.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Here in Frederick Maryland we are trying to set up an unmanned</DIV>
<DIV>D-RATS Internet/RF station at our repeater site and wish to use the</DIV>
<DIV>automatic E-mail forwarding feature of D-RATS to gate E-mail</DIV>
<DIV>between D-RATS RF only stations and D-RATS Internet only stations,</DIV>
<DIV>a very cool feature which works well.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But there is a problem, I don’t think what we want to do is legal, but
it</DIV>
<DIV>ought to be. D-RATS has no system callsign authentication</DIV>
<DIV>and as such no way to tell a ham from a non-ham using the
system. Under</DIV>
<DIV>normal circumstances with Internet only D-RATS stations this isn’t</DIV>
<DIV>a problem, but by attaching a radio to D-RATS, having the automatic</DIV>
<DIV>E-mail forwarding feature of D-RATS enabled, and actually doing
automatic</DIV>
<DIV>E-mail forwarding by an unmanned D-RATS station I believe would be</DIV>
<DIV>in violation of FCC Part 97.219d. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I hope somebody can either set me straight on this or I hope it is
possible</DIV>
<DIV>to put some type of callsign authentication scheme on D-RATS or</DIV>
<DIV>possibly just on our station because the automatic E-mail forwarding</DIV>
<DIV>feature of D-RATS with RF and Internet is just too cool to not use.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Note we are not programmers here and couldn’t possibly do this
ourselves</DIV>
<DIV>for our station.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>73 and Happy Holidays all</DIV>
<DIV>KB3ONM</DIV>
<DIV>Kirk</DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>