Packet radio?

[Andy Valencia]

Any packet radio users out there? All the old packet frequencies
seem pretty quiet from where I live.

For that matter... is this newsgroup still alive? Hello?
(tap tap) Is this thing on?

73's,
Andy Valencia K6AJV
Home page: http://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: http://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

[No Body]

Still works.. packet is quiet here, too.. except for occasional
test messages... :-)

[Fred McKenzie]

In article <slrnlk9uls...@hub.fern.com>,

I'm working on getting back on packet after many years away. I
occasionally hear packet data on a scanner tuned to Two Meter
frequencies and the 441 MHz packet backbone, but they may just be
beacons.

The local Two Meter frequencies were 145.01 and 145.07, as best I can
remember. I plan to park the packet receiver on each frequency for a
while, and see who shows up.

Fred
K4DII

[Andy Valencia]

Fred McKenzie <fm...@aol.com> writes:
> I'm working on getting back on packet after many years away. I
> occasionally hear packet data on a scanner tuned to Two Meter
> frequencies and the 441 MHz packet backbone, but they may just be
> beacons.

Great to hear from a few fellow hams! Since I stopped doing
ham packet, it seems like SMS has taken the world by storm.
So I've been playing with what a next generation SMS service
on ham would look like. I can code, and I've done networking,
including standards work. So I'll play with things, and do
a write up when I have some results.

73's,
Andy Valencia

[Khelair]

To: Andy Valencia
Re: Packet radio?
By: Andy Valencia to alt.ham-radio.packet on Tue Apr 08 2014 17:55:32

> Any packet radio users out there? All the old packet frequencies
> seem pretty quiet from where I live.

I really want to be. Only problem lately has been trying to balance
entry-level wages in the service industry with the cost of hardware after
taking into account food for 2 children, 2 adults, and 1 senior, along with the
$1500/mo rent in the wild west here. :| Hoping to have my BBS accessible via
packet radio and to get into HAM more than a little bit myself within the next
few months, if possible.
Upper midwest USA here; where are you at, if I might ask?

-- guh up the effbomb down wif yr bad self

--- Synchronet 3.16a-OpenBSD NewsLink 1.102
Tinfoil Tetrahedron: telnet://bismaninfo.hopto.org:8023/

[Andy Valencia]

"Khelair" <khe...@bismaninfo.hopto.org.remove-y7m-this> writes:
> > Any packet radio users out there? All the old packet frequencies
> > seem pretty quiet from where I live.

> I really want to be. Only problem lately has been trying to balance
> entry-level wages in the service industry with the cost of hardware after
> taking into account food for 2 children, 2 adults, and 1 senior, along with
> the $1500/mo rent in the wild west here. :| Hoping to have my BBS
> accessible via packet radio and to get into HAM more than a little bit
> myself within the next few months, if possible.

Well, one bit of good news is that 2M handhelds have never been
as cheap as they are now with these China products. I have a $39
2m/70cm handie talkie on order. Amazingly, the reviews on it say
that it's decent. For me, it gives me an easy way to dedicate a
rig to a packet frequency.

> Upper midwest USA here; where are you at, if I might ask?

Seattle area. I must say, I'm happy to have heard back from some
hams!

73's... Andy Valencia K6AJV

[Khelair]

To: Andy Valencia
Re: Re: Packet radio?
By: Andy Valencia to alt.ham-radio.packet on Wed Apr 09 2014 18:06:42

> Well, one bit of good news is that 2M handhelds have never been
> as cheap as they are now with these China products. I have a $39
> 2m/70cm handie talkie on order. Amazingly, the reviews on it say
> that it's decent. For me, it gives me an easy way to dedicate a
> rig to a packet frequency.

Can you do AX.25 via handheld equipment like that? I am really kind of
lacking on the info between raw HAM and anything digital right now.

> > Upper midwest USA here; where are you at, if I might ask?
> Seattle area. I must say, I'm happy to have heard back from some
> hams!

:) Nice! I've got a friend in Portland who may be trying to work out some
digital capabilities via AX.25 at some point soon, if all goes well.

[Andy Valencia]

"Khelair" <khe...@bismaninfo.hopto.org.remove-fvs-this> writes:
> Can you do AX.25 via handheld equipment like that? I am really kind of
> lacking on the info between raw HAM and anything digital right now.

That's how I did it "back in the day". Mic/speaker ports, meet TNC.
TNC, here's mic/speaker. I must've done something to match up mic
level, but I don't remember anything.

Andy Valencia

[Khelair]

To: Andy Valencia
Re: Re: Packet radio?

By: Andy Valencia to alt.ham-radio.packet on Thu Apr 10 2014 16:02:50

> That's how I did it "back in the day". Mic/speaker ports, meet TNC.
> TNC, here's mic/speaker. I must've done something to match up mic
> level, but I don't remember anything.

Gotcha. ;) God I love the hardware that I can jury-rig like that ;)

[Stuart Longland VK4MSL]

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 17:55:32 -0700, Andy Valencia wrote:

> Any packet radio users out there? All the old packet frequencies seem
> pretty quiet from where I live.
>
> For that matter... is this newsgroup still alive? Hello?
> (tap tap) Is this thing on?

I'm starting to get into packet radio myself. I'm in Brisbane, and much
of the packet radio infrastructure is gone now, so we're more or less
beginning from scratch.

My primary OS for this is Linux, and much of *that* is rather out of date
(i.e. we have Unix98 PTYs now).

I'm looking around to see if I can apply it for a worthwhile use case.
One such use case I'm investigating is message passing, and in
particular, UUCP for distribution of email and news.

UUCP was of course, intended for dial-up modems, but I really don't think
it cares: so long as it can send the widget it's talking to appropriate
commands to make it connect to the remote node, it's happy. So the link
could be dial-up, SSH, AX.25 or D-Star. D-Star 23cm looks like a good
system for trunk links, and AX.25 has the bonus of being easily
implemented (soundmodem + interface cable to your radio is all you need).

I'm also looking to evaluate different packet BBS systems to see what
might suit the job. F6FBB is supposedly a highly regarded one, but I
couldn't get it to behave, so no idea on that one. Unode is rather
incomplete. URONode is next on my list.

[No Body]

> > Well, one bit of good news is that 2M handhelds have never been
> > as cheap as they are now with these China products. I have a $39
> > 2m/70cm handie talkie on order. Amazingly, the reviews on it say
> > that it's decent. For me, it gives me an easy way to dedicate a
> > rig to a packet frequency.
>

> Can you do AX.25 via handheld equipment like that? I am really kind of
> lacking on the info between raw HAM and anything digital right now.

Have you seen the new Kenwood replacement for the handheld APRS rig? It will
do packet too.. both 2m and 70cm... 1200 and 9600.. with a builtin GPS.. and
full APRS / Digi capability. and you can plug it into your computer with a
USB cable and do KISS mode.. so it's open to other packet operations.

Apparently it will do igate stuff as well..

It's a lot cheaper than the TM-D710.. and with an add on amp has most of the
capabilities. I'm leaning that way to replace my aging TM-D700.

[Andy Valencia]

> Have you seen the new Kenwood replacement for the handheld APRS rig? It will
> do packet too.. both 2m and 70cm... 1200 and 9600.. with a builtin GPS.. and
> full APRS / Digi capability. and you can plug it into your computer with a
> USB cable and do KISS mode.. so it's open to other packet operations.

You mean the TM-72A? Wow, $500 for a teensy screen and no way to enter
text except spinning that knob on top? Why aren't there any rigs based
on these $100 Android devices? Seems like another $50 would add a 2m/70cm
RF section plus a battery upgrade, and then you can run a softmodem on
Android and you'd have a killer ham digital device for $150.

Andy Valencia

[Stuart Longland VK4MSL]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2014 11:39:26 -0700, Andy Valencia wrote:

>> Have you seen the new Kenwood replacement for the handheld APRS rig? It
>> will do packet too.. both 2m and 70cm... 1200 and 9600.. with a builtin
>> GPS.. and full APRS / Digi capability. and you can plug it into your
>> computer with a USB cable and do KISS mode.. so it's open to other
>> packet operations.
>
> You mean the TM-72A? Wow, $500 for a teensy screen and no way to enter
> text except spinning that knob on top? Why aren't there any rigs based
> on these $100 Android devices? Seems like another $50 would add a
> 2m/70cm RF section plus a battery upgrade, and then you can run a
> softmodem on Android and you'd have a killer ham digital device for
> $150.

Such devices I hear are in the pipeline somewhere, but not from the usual
suspects. There's been talk of such sets on the digitalvoice group.

I've also seen one company that sold a phone case (one for iPhone,
another for some Android phone) that acted as an external battery and
embedded a commercial-band transceiver in it.

I think things will change, and the likes of Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu will
get left in the dust. I've got two TH-D72As coming actually, so I'll
soon know how good they are.

I had few complaints about my old TH-F7E, which did allow text entry
using featurephone-style pressing of keypad buttons (i.e. press the 2
button and it cycles between 'ABCabc2') in addition to the knob, so I'd
be surprised if the TH-D72A didn't have something similar.

[Andy Valencia]

Stuart Longland VK4MSL <m...@vk4msl.yi.org> writes:
> Such devices I hear are in the pipeline somewhere, but not from the usual
> suspects. There's been talk of such sets on the digitalvoice group.

If you have any pointers, I would like very much to read about any
efforts in this area. TIA!

[Stuart Longland VK4MSL]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2014 07:46:42 -0700, Andy Valencia wrote:

> Stuart Longland VK4MSL <m...@vk4msl.yi.org> writes:
>> Such devices I hear are in the pipeline somewhere, but not from the
>> usual suspects. There's been talk of such sets on the digitalvoice
>> group.
>
> If you have any pointers, I would like very much to read about any
> efforts in this area. TIA!

On 14/04/14 13:07, Bruce Perens wrote:
> At Hamvention, Chris and I will show the prototype of an HT that runs
> any softmodem you can get to run on an Android system. That means either
> C or Java for codecs and modems and mostly Java for GUIs. The hardware
> transforms baseband to RF as an SSB radio does, but wider. This gives
> you a lot of latitude, it's probably possible to make it talk with every
> existing digital voice protocol and to make new ones. And no more
> hard-coding, so your HT can evolve as time goes on.
>
> I've put a lot of thought into new protocols. I think I can give you a
> significant range increase, and double or triple the channel capacity
> you would have using D-STAR, not to mention FM. 2.5 to 3 kHz should work
> for a voice channel using GMSK or C4FM.

http://groups.google.com/group/digitalvoice

[sxan...@gmail.com]

Also interested about hf packet radio on 20m.73 de sv2evs