Ratflectors are normally just reachable via the Internet unless there is a local emergency going on.? The operators of those ratflectors don't want to tie up a repeater or reflector with a lot of digital data traffic that would interfere with other users of those resources unless it was necessary to do so, and they had permission from the repeater and/or reflector owners.? Each time a station would send out a chat, beacon, QST message or tried to do a file transfer, it would appear that someone was keying up the repeater and not saying anything.? File transfers could take a bit and during that time, no one else would be able to use that resource or series of resources.?
During local emergencies, the ratflector could be brought up on a local simplex channel and still cover a large chunk of real estate without tying up the repeater with digital traffic.? You could make arrangements with another station to bring up D-Rats on a repeater or reflector that is not normally in use for testing, but I would not make a habit of constantly operating in that mode unless there was a need for it.? Otherwise it would just be interfering with others trying to use the resource.
Glen Strecker