[ARRL-OK] Packet radio

Mon, 19 May 2003 15:31:11 +0000

As the former operator of the main full-service BBS on
145.05 MHz, I can provide some info.  I lost my house
and most everything else in the tornado of 3 May 99.
The equipment survived and was put back on the air
a few days later by Norm, N0ELS at his house in Moore.
However, the transmitter/receiver failed a few months
later.  Norm put a rig of his own on line and continued
the service for a few more months until all connectivity
to Oklahoma City disappeared.  In one case the site for
nodes to the southwest was lost due to increased need
by the owner.  At another site, the owner literally stole
the equipment.  At that point there was were only a
couple of users and Norm gave up a task that really
performed no useful function to justify the effort.

Additionally, Y2K came around and obsoleted the
computers and the BBS program being used.

At one time there was an active DX Cluster, but OCAPA
(Oklahoma City Autopatch Association) that was providing
a relay node for locals to reach it recently lost its site for
it and all its repeaters.  Again, hardly anybody used it as
broadband Internet access to worldwide clusters has made
radio-based DX Cluster networks obsolescent, if not totally
obsolete.

73  ---  Mac, K2GKK/5

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Kim Elmore" <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ARRL-OK] Packet radio
Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 09:21:37 -0500

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.
>_______________________________________________
>___________________Information __________________________
>ARRL Oklahoma Section Manager - John Thomason, WB5SYT [email protected]
>Oklahoma Section Web page http://members.cox.net/arrl-ok
>______________________________________________________
>
>To leave ARRL-OK , send mailto:[email protected]
>with the BODY of the message containing:
>
>unsubscribe arrl-ok
>
>
>Arrl-Ok mailing list
>[email protected]
>http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arrl-ok

                           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.

_______________________________________________
___________________Information __________________________
ARRL Oklahoma Section Manager - John Thomason, WB5SYT [email protected]
Oklahoma Section Web page http://members.cox.net/arrl-ok
______________________________________________________

To leave ARRL-OK , send mailto:[email protected]
with the BODY of the message containing:

unsubscribe arrl-ok

Arrl-Ok mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arrl-ok

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus