Good grief! Packet is still around? I had no idea. Was briefly on packet back
sometime in the late 1980s I think- well before the Internet took off. Dan,
N1IOL, lent me a packet system complete with 2M FM radio telling me it was a
great way to send messages and check for DX on a couple of spotting networks.
For me anyway, it didn't seem very efficient and I gave the setup back to him.
Not long after of course we were all on line with the Internet, and even with
an initially s-l-o-w dial up at around 12K it seemed more versatile than ham
packet for my needs. So, it's interesting that it may actually have a use now,
particularly with those solutions to the collisions and retrys slowing things
down. Will be interested to hear how his works locally here in VT. Keep us
updated please,
K2VXO will be visiting for a few days starting Monday evening before we head
off to NEARfest (He's assembling a 2.3 GHz system so we will be working on that
a bit.) But I have the 8 Oct Simplex tests flagged on the calendar and look
forward to specifics. Will try to get on a bit that evening and see what I can
hear and work. Should be interesting. (By chance I ran into Carol, K1CSF, the
other night on 146.52 and she mentioned that she now has a Yagi up that is
tipped at 45 degrees to work both FM as well as weak signal CW/SSB. Perhaps she
can get on Tue night as well?)73,ChipW1AIM----- Original Message -----
From: Cathy James <catherine.james@xxxxxxx>
To: cvarc <cvarc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 13:26:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [CVARC] Packet network for Vermont
I am looking into the possibility of building out a small packet
network in Vermont, using VHF and UHF links between simple ham-owned
home nodes for real-time chat communications. No commercial sites,
no fancy infrastructure, just simple, inexpensive fun.
North Carolina has built a very successful network on this basis,
using a $35 Raspberry Pi as the node computer and $45 TNC Pis as the
node controllers. The key requirement is dedicated links between
nodes on different frequencies, which avoids the packet collision
and persistence problem. If you have three nodes A, B, and C, you
would have a link from A to B on one frequency, and a separate link
from B to C on a different frequency (probably on a different band;
6, 2, and 70 cm all work, and 10 is a possibility).
1200 baud may sound slow, until you realize that PSK31 was a very
successful chatting mode at 31 baud. Packet seemed slow not
because of the 1200 baud limitation, but because of all the
collisions and retries. The dedicated links fix that problem.
Unlike Winlink and the old national packet network, we would NOT
connect this to the Internet. That would just swamp the packet
network with garbage it can't handle, much of which has nothing to
do with ham radio.
More information here on the North Carolina team's great success
with this type of network:
http://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html
Here's what you would need to build at each node:
http://tarpn.net/t/builder/builders_node_shopping_list.html
I've already had a phone chat with Tadd, the lead on the North
Carolina TARPN network. He's enthused about helping us get started.
Is anyone interested in working on this with me?
73,
Cathy N5WVR
