First, a couple tips.

The OpenGIS WMS specs can very helpful (here)

A quick read says that the bbox syntax you used is wrong (sorry :), the coordinates must be comma-separated. i.e. &bbox=-180,-90,180,90 will give a map for the whole earth. Bbox defines the geographic extents shown on the map, so you just need to hone that down a little bit.

Second tip, if you build your own URL and make some mistake, the provider will often return a message that is quite helpful. For example, I tried:

http://dev.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms_nhc?request=GetMap&format=image/gif&srs=EPSG:4269&version=1.1.1&layers=frances_track&bbox=-100+100+200+200

Wrong number of arguments for BBOX.

Once I replaced with a (more?) valid coordinates and put in commas instead of +, then it works.

The only other factor that you may not be familiar with is the ability to request an image size. This is done using

&height

&width

Here's one URL I came up with for a tiny image.

http://dev.gomoos.org/cgi-bin/wms_nhc?request=GetMap&format=image/gif&srs=EPSG:4269&version=1.1.1&layers=land,frances_track&bbox=-120,20,0,40&width=200&height=150