At the writing of this post, SV2AGW maintains a two-part set of software he shares with other hams without charge for hobby use ( “hamware”). To use packet radio on Windows 10, you need to have a terminal program that can understand AX.25 protocols. What follows works readily with a Kenwood TH-D72A or TM-710GA, VECTOR’s primary UHF-VHF field radios. I even established direct connections with VE7NV and VE7CNV at a packet night to observe what we could do. You can find several active packet radio sites in our area to explore and practice using a few simple steps.Īfter “listening” for a while using axlisten, I found a few packet radio sites to visit. I am looking forward to the day it is fully operational.Practice Getting to a Packet Radio BBS, a tale of two packetsĪttending a VECTOR packet night has shown me a couple of ways we can explore packet radio beyond the message transfers we do in RMS Winlink (or Pat) and VCTPacket. This is an APRS graphic application to be started from graphic user interface men. Web server lighthttpd (/var/watchdog (RPi reboots in case of Linux kernel failure)ĭxget (DX spots broadcast on AX.25 ports)Īx25ipd for AX.25 frames encapsulation into UDP/TCP Internet protocols frames or reversely encapsulated IP frames stripped into AX.25 frames.Īx25d : daemon redirecting incoming frames from peripheral devices to appropriate application software depending on protocols and ports. Meanwhile, especially for those techies amongst you, I list what the BBS software runs when the Pi is switched on:ĪX.25 packet radio switch FPAC node (NetRom and ROSE protocols). I will probably write two posts, on running and using the BBS, once it is operational. It also happens to run on a Raspberry Pi 3 with ease ~ which is lower on the electricity bill 🙂 I decided to go for the latter as Linux is an operating system that rarely ‘ falls over‘ (crashes) and is very efficient in terms of memory use, etc., and so can handle 8 connections at once without causing the computer any problems at all!

I wanted to use the excellent ‘FBB’ software, very common ‘ back in the day‘ (1990s), and was very pleasantly surprised to see that there is still a free version being supplied ~ and it has been updated: Windows & Linux versions. Look at it as an early internet ( see last post).

What I need to use, in addition, is a computer running ‘ Bulletin Board Software‘ (BBS) in order to handle, for example, mail and news items for myself and other radio amateurs across parts of Kent & East Sussex. It is all very well having a dedicated VHF 2m Ham Band radio sitting on the Packet Frequency of 144.950MHz, alongside a Packet ‘ Terminal Node Controller‘ (TNC), but that, in itself, is not going to allow a resurrected GB7RMS to rise from the past!

Ham radio bbs software