It's not big in Australia, most people just use the Internet. I like the idea of an distributed network not beholden to Telcos. There's some really good implementations overseas for remote health, agriculture and IoT integration. I'm not sure I'd go to all that trouble for an SMS though
It's not that much trouble, I've got one not far from me and have been using it to chat.
Plus you can use it in private mode between two people, I just like having an off grid comms option.
Doesn't seem much point in using SMS when you can talk to the US and many other countries via your HAM radio and actually hear a voice. I used to talk to people interstate on my 27meg from SA when the skip was running and the Indonesians were in bed.
Yea I have a HF rig 1.8mhz, 3.5mhz, 7mhz, 14mhz, 18mhz, 21mhz, 24mhz, 28mhz and 50mhz, I'm only allowed on 3.5mhz, 7mhz, 21mhz and 28mhz under my licence conditions.
They all skip differently, 1.8 and 3.5mhz are ground wave, 7mhz to 24mhz are long range ionospheric bouncing frequencies, 28 and 50mhz are the top of HF 50mhz is actually VHF, but they get sporadic E and weather related skip, also the time of day changes for all frequencies how effective they are.
7mhz is good for a late evening skip over to the US from Australia.
Also the HF transceiver I have, most all do, has 4 modes.
CW continuous wave: used for morse code, this is where the Q code comes from, CW is usually used at the bottom of the band.
AM amplitude modulation: is a phone method of radio so voice not used commonly these days, usually used at the top of the band.
USB upper sideband: used 14mhz and up for phone, it's up with AM at the phone portion of the band.
LSB lower sideband: used 7mhz and down for phone same deal at the top of the band.
Digital: used in the centre of the band, can be used on a SB/CW radio with a electronic adaptor, but many modern radios will be able to do digital natively via USB. Here is an example of a modern HF radio.
https://www.icomjapan.com/lineup/products/IC-7300EUR/
