[ARRL-OK] Packet radio

[Kim Elmore]

I'd been QRT for about 6-7 years after leaving the Front range of Colorado 
in 1995.  When I finally got my station going again here in OK, I found 
that packet activity had essentially ceased and that VHF (2 m) packet radio 
was, for all practical purposes, dead, at least in the OKC area.  There are 
one or two nodes that I can reach from my QTH (5 mi SE of Tinker AFB) but 
there is simply  no activity.

I presume that the Internet has replaced packet radio, and as an HF DXer I 
find this rather sad.  Packet is an ideal medium for low-bandwidth 
communications, such as BBS messages, though I admit that the ALL@NOAM 
messages asking about how to use an SWR meter did get a bit tedious. I 
personally feel that using packet protocol on the Internet is a bit like 
swatting a fly with a 12 ga shotgun: it'll certainly do the job, but it's 
not necessarily the best use of the shotgun.

What happened? Did the few that maintained the backbones simply burn 
out?  Did the new wear off? In and around Boulder, Packer was a useful 
medium for emergency communications because it was traceable, though it may 
have fallen out of favor with the rise of cellular telephone. But then, 
I've also noticed that AMTOR and GTOR (which was never terribly popular) 
have also vanished form the HF bands.  It's now all either standard, 
beloved RTTY, Pactor, PSK31 or HF packet (the latter is nearly unbelievable 
given how poorly it works).

Is packet *really* dead now, and the technology abandoned? What evolution 
did I miss in my 6 year hiatus?

73,

Kim Elmore, N5OP

At 08:25 AM 5/18/2003 -0500, Lloyd Colston wrote:
>If you still have an interest in packet but no local node, you can get
>your free account at N5VDA.
>
>telnet://gw.n5vda.ampr.org
>
>to sign up.
>
>http://gw.n5vda.ampr.org/
>
>is the web interface.
>
>Let me know how more  I can help.
>
>
>Lloyd Colston             Mayes County Emergency Management
>Pryor, OK USA           http://www.geocities.com/mccem
>         Homeland Security begins at HOME.
>_______________________________________________
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>ARRL Oklahoma Section Manager - John Thomason, WB5SYT wb5syt@arrl.org
>Oklahoma Section Web page http://members.cox.net/arrl-ok
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                           Kim Elmore, Ph.D.
                        University of Oklahoma
         Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies
"All of weather is divided into three parts: Yes, No, and Maybe. The
greatest of these is Maybe" The original Latin appears to be garbled.