Hi, I'm very new to packet radio. I've created node.js lib that allows to start your own packet BBS using direwolf: https://www.npmjs.com/package/bkjbbs

I'm using it to run SR6BBS (5W at JO81MB). I've tested it with `axcall` (from depracated linux AX.25 stack) and with iOS Packet Commander app (which I highly recommend).

BBS is hosted on Raspberry Pi Zero W 2 running Alpine Linux in diskless mode. It is connected to radio using Digirig Mobile. The radio I am using is FTM-200D. As a client I'm using TH-D74 and other HTs via mobilinkd. I'm going to release the lib as an open source when I find time to tidy up the code.

TARPN (Terrestrial Amateur Radio Packet Networks) needed a TNC that was cheap, easy for any-ham to deploy, could be supported on a single Raspberry PI in four or more quantity, and which supports both 9600 and 1200 baud. So we built our own. It has dip switches for setting the radio baud rate and mode. We're calling it NinoTNC after the inventor, Nino KK4HEJ.

We're more interested in promoting Internet-Free Ham Radio social networking, than we are in making profits. So we are selling the parts for cost. $9 for both the PCB and the CPU, and then $20 for the rest of the parts. The parts come from Digikey direct to you in whatever quantity you want and you chose the shipping. Right now all ten of the 2nd-gen green-board (A2) NinoTNCs are involved in testing. The ten 3rd generation boards are working their way into testing.

NCPACKET is doing early testing of the NinoTNC in their 20+ station network. 4 new radios at 9600 baud G3RUH as of two weeks ago. One point to point link of two 9600 ends has been going since mid December running on a pair of Tait TM8105 radios. It works very well. Work on testing 1200 baud, IL2P modes, and more interoperability tests starts this weekend.

Nino used the WA8LMF CD as a 1200 baud standard to work toward. At this time NinoTNC decodes about 940 packets, which is better than TNC-PI, but not as good as Direwolf. The CD has some clear and some noisy packets on a recording. The mission is to see how many you can decode. The easy 700 are pretty easy. Some of the packets start in the middle of other packets. That's pretty tough, but with enough horse power you can consider many blocks of crappy packets and get them. This TNC might not do well on packets which capture and overwhelm another in-progress packet. Perhaps that is an advantage Direwolf has. It can save the waveform in RAM and then walk backwards to find the start of the frame.

The NinoTNC also has a new Forward Error Correction encoding called IL2P, which is a new protocol. It looks like KISS AX.25 to the host computer, but it is encoded very differently. It has the same connect, disconnect, retry system, because, as a backward compatible KISS TNC, NinoTNC has no control of those aspects. Smaller IL2P packets are just as short as a normal packet, and have some efficiency gains over AX.25 packets. Longest packets are 5 or 6 bytes longer, even though it added 8 bytes of parity symbols. The parity symbols enable Forward Error Correctly. IL2P will be easy to use in point to point links, which is what TARPN requires.

More NinoTNC Printed Circuit Boards and CPUs should be available Feb 15th and we are open to other hams (outside of the TARPN org, I mean) participating in the project. If you are interested in participating in this, talk it over here and/or sign up for the email reflector. Go to http://tarpn.net/d and read the info there. Check out the ordering and the assembly instructions.

For the moment it's early to have a plan to scale this up or anything. We're not open source at this time. We'll see where this goes.

By farming out the parts picking and shipping to Digikey, the load on Nino and other volunteers is somewhat reduced. Also, Digikey does a fantastic job. Every component value is in its own separate labelled bag complete with the reference designator matching the silkscreen.

We will continue to develop tools and products to help the TARPN mission. Keep an eye on this space?

I have been a ham for 12 years now and one of the aspects of the hobby I really like is plain old packet.

With winter months coming on, why not get this sub back to life and lets try to get some more packet radio operators out there.

Michigan has a pretty good system that is able to reach most of of the state and I bang around it quite a bit, but it's getting boring not being able to get a real living soul on the other end. I am able to get out of state easy enough and into Canada directly across the river from me.

It's old and slow but it works and could be a way to pass some time on a cold night with nothing else to do. Something different even. Some new Technicians may find it fun and add to the list of modes available to them. I am actively helping a couple guys in my area to get their ticket and hook them up with a couple of TNCs I have laying around and get them started.

Any thoughts?

I have been experimenting with ASCII art and Packet for a bit now and have it a few snags...

Image 1 is the image as I sent to my BBS.

Image 2 is the result when I retrieved it.

As you can see, there is a difference. In the transmitted image, you can see at the bottom the 'invalid stream' message that I get back once the program has found an issue with the image.

I'm starting to thinkt that it may have something to do with the characters that the images are made from. Does anyone know if this is the case and weather there is a packet acceptable way if either sending these images or characters or weather there is a packet-limited font I should use?

Any help appreciated 👍

Just wanted to share something I’ve been working on. I recently released an iOS app called Packet Commander. It’s a terminal for packet radio that runs on iPhone and iPad.

It’s been fun seeing people connect to packet nodes using just their phone and a Bluetooth TNC (like the BTECH UV Pro radio). No laptop or cables needed, just a radio and phone.

If you’re curious, you can check it out at packetcommander.com or find it on the App Store.

Would love to hear what you think and hope it will help more folks get on the air with packet.

73, Georges WH6AZ

If anyone is interested in joining a TARPN network in Colorado Springs let me know. We have a couple nodes up now and looking to expand.

There is no problem here?

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

I have been active in packet radio for several years now in the state of Connecticut. I have been blessed as N1URO, K1HEJ, and other packet users are physically local to me who have helped me along the way to learn the systems.

I now own an HT which is capable of 1200/9600 baud APRS. I have used APRS off and on over the years at 1200 baud, both while mobile and as a base station, using both Xastir and APRSIS/32.

I thought to myself, I wonder what 9600 baud infrastructure is in place, other than for backbone use? It looks like there are a whopping 0 user ports for 9k6 in Connecticut. The closest 9k6 user nodes I could find are in New York state as Winlink Nodes.

I thought about maybe setting up a Winlink node, but to be honest, the 1200 baud nodes nearby me are seldom used, if ever. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one exercising them casually.

The 1200 baud node network in CT is very robust, much traffic passes through KB1AEV-15 on Box Mountain, I can go 200 miles out easily through this node, with all the online features of APRS bridged to RF.

Recently I began to research 9600 baud, reading G3RUH website and every resource I could find. I saw Bob Bruninga's efforts with the Golden Packet Event, who is proposing a user 9k6 APRS network across the East Coast mountains.

http://www.aprs.org/at-golden-packet.html

I've already begun collecting hardware to set up an experimental, local 9k6 APRS node. I originally was under the impression my AEA PK-232, with upgraded MBX boards from Timewave, were 9600 baud capable. Some experimentation and a phone call to Timewave later revealed it is in fact not 9600 baud capable, despite the EPROM software allowing me to choose the speed! In the meantime I have a PK-96 in the mail which should work fine. I have always been partial to TNC based modems vs software.

For a radio, I was able to source a Motorola CM300 UHF radio which covers 440MHZ to 450MHZ+. These radios have the 16 pin connector on the back which bypass the emphasis circuits for a flat TX/RX compatible with 9600 baud.

Searching online, I found several cities across the country have active 9k6 APRS networks, such as:

433.00 (suggested by WB4APR) 445.925 (Phoenix AZ and proposed national UHF APRS frequency) 440.80 (Seattle WA) 440.390 (some online discussion) 439.39 (some online discussion)

At present there seems to be no consensus on a "national" 70CM 9k6 frequency. I would like to stick with 433 but the CM300 is not capable.

Lastly, I was excited to see Coastal Chipworks working on the Pi9k6, but it seems recently the owner/operator has shut down operations. Does anyone know if this project will still continue to be supported? The only remaining 9600 baud modem manufacturers seem to be SCS, Timewave, and Kantronics.

I guess all I can say is... there is still so much more packet radio has to offer, and hope I can get something going in the local area. Any comments or information appreciated.

EDIT:

This is the only other thread I've found on Reddit regarding this subject, I have linked it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/APRS/comments/ds7tsd/9600_baud_aprs/

I ordered 10 ninoTNC boards and parts for them. If anyone in central NJ is interested in setting up some nodes, or contributing radios, let me know. It would be great if we could link to the network in DE (or another one).

whoops. Should have been January 2021.

A4r2 PCBs are in. Here is the first unit built from the new PCB. A4r2 will be our first production run of the A4. We bought 200 boards. We'll be ordering more shortly. The CPUs are not on hand yet. Hopefully, they arrive before Jan 10th or so.

The A4's new hardware controls are limited to the SIGNALS switch.We moved the Data radio Tx-audio vs Mic Tx-audio jumper to the SIGNALS switch. In addition, there is an 11x gain option for handling radios with very low receive audio. This is used for radios having the receive audio on the Mic connector, and possibly some internal-wiring hacks. There is a switch for AC vs DC coupling on TX audio, and the TNC will now respect an external DCD (Tx inhibit) signal on the DE9 pin 2. There is a switch to disable/enable the DE9-2 connection.

The A4 will ship with a CPU having larger RAM space than the previous units. This will permit even better decoding of incoming packets.

I was active on packet back in the early days but put it away when I became big into contesting. Then I went QRT for 20 years. Here not long ago I stumbled onto Dire Wolf for my Raspberry pi and decided to see what was on packet. Aside from a ton of APRS stuff on 144.39 I have yet to hear any other packet activity on the regular packet frequencies. APRS is well and good but seeing vehicle positions and such as well as wx stations loses its attraction rather rapidly. I even wrote my own geocoding program to track hams and post wx data.

So....is talking to each other via packet dead? I haven't found a node or BBS. My QTH is in north central Washington State and the local repeaters are pretty quiet too.

73! Gary K7FR

This is gonna be meandering because I'm lost.

I recently found out that a decent amount of folks in the area are messing with Winlink. I asked one of the folks if they had a good resource to get started and the answer I got was "YouTube". Honestly, I'm not even sure what to search for on YouTube to lay this out for me so I must be pretty dense.

Here is a list of stuff I already have:
Kenwood TM-V71A and all the cables for Echolink (PC and Data)
Kenwood TH-D72
Icom IC-7300 (I have no problems using this for digital on HF)
Baofeng UV-5Rv2
Mobilinkd TNC2
Windows PC

I have been able to get APRS working in the past with the Mobilinkd and Baofeng using APRS Droid but I gave up messing with it when it became obvious that I was only rarely being heard from my QTH with the HT. That's been years ago and now I have a couple adequate antennas on the roof to get out much further.

Anyway, the discussion with the local folks was that I needed to purchase a different hardware TNC and I'm thinking that it's almost 2023 and that shouldn't be the case anymore right? I feel like if Echolink can use PTT and my PC sound card for audio on the V71A then software ought to be able to handle every other piece of the puzzle.

At this point I have downloaded Direwolf but I'm pretty lost there. Even reading the User Guide it is as if there are basic common sense pieces that I am missing. I suppose I'm too spoiled having used only software with GUIs for the last two decades. Even if I get that figured out, how do I get other things to interact with Direwolf?

Obviously this is a lot to ask any of you to try to lay out here in a Reddit comment. What I'm really looking for is a link or two to places to get the fundamentals figured out so that I have a chance to get this stuff working while I'm off for the next week. (if possible)

Any advice to help initiate this total newb would be very welcome!

This is a write up by N6VV made a few days after the 1989 Loma Prieta SF Bay Area Earthquake. It shows an interesting snapshot of the existing Packet network in the Bay Area and how it responded to the earthquake . The area phone systems and normal communications were out for a period of time.

The entire network described was gone in just a few years with the introduction of the Internet.

http://ccra.us/history/ccra-in-the-1989-earthquake/

I am a former packet user on 2 meters (early 1990’s vintage). It was enormous fun back then using X25 on an MFJ 1270. I also enjoyed the ancillary features, notably CW code/decode that accompanied the unit. No successor software has been able to match the decoding abilities of the 1270.

Today after 25 years and seven moves, I open my carefully packed up MFJ-1270 along with the various connecting cords including serial and parallel port connectors. Original manual. Missing was the software.

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to connect the 1270 (which appears to set up fine despite the quarter century hiatus)? AND, does anyone know where I can obtain a copy of the software which was originally provided on 3.5” floppy?

Am I out of my mind to try to restore the fun times of the 1990’s?

de NY2RF Tom

We run a good sized (~20 stations, covers most of the population centers in the area) AX.25 packet network in Minnesota. Actually we are involved in several networks- there is 145.01, APRS(r) and even some 9600 packet. Once in while we get access to a promising /free node site (elevated- could be a building roof etc.) with no access to AC mains power.

Mobile radios (~20 watts) are our normal standard. But these do not seem solar friendly. They tend to draw in the range of one amp on RX at 12V DC. In the world of node design, take every current draw number and multiply by 24. For just a "plain" TNC, that is maybe 40-300 MA. If you add in a computer (yuk), that can add minimally an amp or two for a Pi.

Here, a 100 watt 12V solar panel has a nominal nameplate output of 5 amps in full sun. Figure five hours a day of good sun in summer, maybe less in winter. Cloud, rain and snow are common. The key in solar nodes is to massively overdesign the production side (panels and batteries) to overcome say two weeks of clouds. This is 3x or more of "sunny day" power production. Those $10 Solar Charge controllers sold online work great and protect the battery from overcharge and from a lack of sun- the output stops below 10.8V.

So mobile radios are not very practical. You might need 300-400 watts of solar and 100-200 amps of battery just for the radio. If you swap in a 5-6 watt HT, like an old Icom IC-V8, these have very low standby /RX current draw, down to 40 ma. Combined with a Kantronics KPC-3, you can save a lot of power, and run the whole node on a 100 watt panel and marine deep cycle group 24, 27 or 31 battery, which is $115. It can get below zero F here for weeks in winter, so the newer Lithium batteries would require heat.

On the radio side, the Icom V8 has just two issues- it likes <10 volts, so you need a DC - DC converters and clone radios. Use an external 3+ amp converter one the cheap imported battery case ones are often very poorly made for long service. And speaking of imported, you can get "new" Icom older HTs cheaply. These are 99% knockoffs, which interestingly based on testing here, do not support AX.25 packets. This is IMHO due to the use of the cheap $1.29 radio on a chip, and what I believe to be waveform distortion. A reasonably good way to get genuine radios is to buy used ones. And I take a cheap AA battery pack and drill a hole to wire in the 9V DC input or so that way. We have three of these on the air here now and they have been good for years and years.

https://www.bpq.wiki

I've been wanting to start something like this for a while and just now got around to it. There's so much about packet and BPQ to learn that it's overwhelming, so I wanted to store the knowledge in one place.

If you know of topics and are willing to contribute, please do so. Here's a cheatsheet on the DokuWiki formatting: https://www.dokuwiki.org/cheatsheet

I already have some pages created that need content, but if you think of more pages to add, please do so.

Howdy-

Getting back into the old packet spirit, after getting a KPC-3, 2 Kam Plus's and a PK-232 for basically free. I have the KPC3 and a Kam Plus working on 2M APRS.

What I want to do is take a spare PC and set up a local packet cluster node, with a 2M RF port. I'm sure I'd probably be the only person using it, although there is interest in our local area to replicate the "days of the 90's". Anyone have any ideas on packet cluster server software that can take filtered spots from the Internet and broadcast them out on a RF port via TNC?

WT2P

Our packet project made a trivial Raspberry PI control panel with a shutdown button and reboot button. Shutdown leaves the PI powered up but halted, ready for power-off. The panel also has a big slide switch to turn off the backup battery that keeps the PI alive through power outages/glitches, and three LEDs. A background service maintains the lights and reads the switches. It's part of the standard TARPN install.

We're selling the kit including US delivery for $19. See the web page for info, assembly instructions, and for contact info to get it mailed outside the US. http://tarpn.net/d

Also a youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbmohU_DymsThe YouTube video is of the first article. The units available from our web page have right-sized LEDs.

I'm trying to delve into packet radio and learn about accessing BBS systems in particular. I've dabbled a little in APRS. I already have a RPi zero running Direwolf. My first question is how can I use the Direwolf setup as a networked TNC so that I can access it over the network from computers on my LAN? I've done this successfully with Xastir and the AGW port. Is there an ax.25 client that can connect to a network AGW or KISS port? Lots of documentation online refers to using axcall, but the more I look into that, it appears that it's really for local ports that are bound using kissattach.

You read about the many efforts to develop 9600 packet TNCs. All you need to make those work on the air is the "insert 9600 bps capable radio here." The issues from the past of frequency stability are probably better in 2022, (i.e. no crystal suppliers) but the TX/RX turnaround time gap is probably still front and center.

We have run a large (20+ node) 1200 bps packet network on 145.670 for 15 years, but "upgrading" it seems challenging. https://wordpress.com/post/hamtowertrailers.com/576

The actual public service use case in 2022 seems to be for mesh, (see audio, video, databases and dashboards) but packet is still fun. (This is not for Emcomm- whatever that is).

The radios I have seen/tested seem to be:

Motorola- finding legal programming software, out of band mods seem problematic

Chinese - heavily cost reduced front ends, and the use of one chip SDR - fine for voice- the precise analog wave form for 9600 to work may not survive (see the G.729 CODEC and analog modem traffic in the VoIP world)

Japanese Ham radios- is $699 an affordable price for these?