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  CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-01-07 10:55 -0700
    Re: CQ Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2021-01-07 13:22 -0500
      Re: CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-01-07 18:05 -0700
        Re: CQ Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> - 2021-01-08 08:31 -0500
          Re: CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-01-08 09:32 -0700
    Re: CQ j01 <j01@tty7.org> - 2021-01-12 17:46 -0500
    Re: CQ Daniel <me@sci.fidan.com> - 2021-02-02 00:14 -0800
      Re: CQ Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> - 2021-02-02 12:11 -0700
        Re: CQ Daniel <me@sci.fidan.com> - 2021-02-04 08:36 -0800
    Re: CQ Andy Valencia <vandys@vsta.org> - 2021-02-02 07:55 -0800
    Re: CQ Daniel <me@sci.fi.dan.com> - 2021-07-18 00:00 -0700

#1 — CQ

Hi,

Is there anyone lurking in the packet radio newsgroups any more?

I'm looking for someone to chat with about AX.25 / Net/ROM, particularly 
on Linux.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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#2

On 1/7/21 12:55 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there anyone lurking in the packet radio newsgroups any more?
> 
> I'm looking for someone to chat with about AX.25 / Net/ROM, particularly 
> on Linux.
> 
> 
> 

Well, I still hang out here but I am not every active.  To the best
of my knowledge there is no AX.25 activity anywhere around me. (Heck,
I can't even find an active 2 meter repeater within my range.)  I miss
the days when I ran digipeaters on mountaintops and saw massive amounts 
of traffic.I had a  lot of stuff I thought would be interesting with
AX.25 but it seems everyone else got bored of it and with the advent
of the Internet all but gave up.  And don't get me started on the strong
NIH syndrome that infected it.  At least around where I was.

bill
KB3YV
FN21hj

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#3

On 1/7/21 11:22 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> Well, I still hang out here but I am not every active.

I've been subscribed to the newsgroup for quite a while.  But my message 
was the first one in my servers 2+ year history in the 
alt.ham-radio.packet and free.packet.radio newsgroups.

> To the best of my knowledge there is no AX.25 activity anywhere 
> around me. (Heck, I can't even find an active 2 meter repeater within 
> my range.)

I'm sort of surprised that there isn't a 2m repeater in range.

I'm also a little surprised that there isn't any APRS activity.

> I miss the days when I ran digipeaters on mountaintops and saw massive 
> amounts of traffic.

I know of digipeaters.  Though I'm evaluating Net/ROM vs ROSE for 
something I'm thinking about doing.

I think that Net/ROM might be nicer in that it has automatic routing vs 
ROSE which is completely manual routing.  Though I like the fact that 
ROSE is actually X.25 implemented on top of AX.25.  At least, as best as 
I can tell.

I'd sort of like a private X.25 cloud.

> I had a  lot of stuff I thought would be interesting with AX.25 but 
> it seems everyone else got bored of it and with the advent of the 
> Internet all but gave up.

*nod*

One of the reasons that I got into ham radio was the communications 
ability that didn't depend on the Internet.

> And don't get me started on the strong NIH syndrome that infected it. 
> At least around where I was.

I don't get the Not Invented Here mentality.  I've long been a fan of 
standing on the shoulders of giants.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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#4

On 1/7/21 8:05 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 1/7/21 11:22 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> Well, I still hang out here but I am not every active.
> 
> I've been subscribed to the newsgroup for quite a while.  But my message 
> was the first one in my servers 2+ year history in the 
> alt.ham-radio.packet and free.packet.radio newsgroups.

Prior to this the only traffic I have seen in any of the ham radio
groups has been garbage telling people (repeatedly ad nauseum) to
visit a web site to read about what they posted as a topic.  Worse
than the last packet I saw which was DX Cluster Broadcasts.  (which,
technically, should be illegal as they are broadcasts!)


> 
>> To the best of my knowledge there is no AX.25 activity anywhere around 
>> me. (Heck, I can't even find an active 2 meter repeater within my range.)
> 
> I'm sort of surprised that there isn't a 2m repeater in range.

So am I as I live a mere 20 miles from Scranton, PA, a major city.
But it seems most of the repeaters have gone away and many of them
seem to have reduced their coverage area.  Even when I hear one
(not often) it is usually not reachable with any of the gear I
have.  And I have set up a scanner to cover all the 2 meter packet
freqs and never hear a thing.

> 
> I'm also a little surprised that there isn't any APRS activity.

I see local (well, within 10 miles of me) APRS activity if I look
online, but I have yet to figure out just what APRS is supposed
to be doing.  Not sure I want everyone to know where I am all
the time.

> 
>> I miss the days when I ran digipeaters on mountaintops and saw massive 
>> amounts of traffic.
> 
> I know of digipeaters.  Though I'm evaluating Net/ROM vs ROSE for 
> something I'm thinking about doing.

Played with both.  Think ROSE would have been nice but it never
caught on and never saw the activity that would have helped it
develop into something really usable.  NETROM is OK but has a
few warts, too.  Howie-Code would have been nice, too,  but it
got even less attention that ROSE. The only things I ever saw
it running in were my DR-200 digipeaters.  I tried a few times
to get the firmware from PACCOmm but, apparently, they lost it.
I contacted Howie Goldstein N2WX a couple times but could never
convince him to release any of his code.  Too bad really because
it was a decent idea.Oh yeah, and then there is also TCPIP but
that kinda faded with real TCPIP on the Internet.  I assume by
now my address allocations are all gone.

> 
> I think that Net/ROM might be nicer in that it has automatic routing vs 
> ROSE which is completely manual routing.  

If it had a chance it might have developed good routing, after all,
it is using the same concepts as the phone system and that seems to
route connections pretty well.  But it died on the vine just like
the rest of Packet Radio.

>                                            Though I like the fact that 
> ROSE is actually X.25 implemented on top of AX.25.  At least, as best as 
> I can tell.

Implementing AX.25 on top of X.25 seems rather silly as they are the
same basic protocol with differences to meet legal limitations.
ROSE is the OSI Networking concept running on top of AX.25  instead
of X.25.  There are lots of good reasons to use OSI but in the industry
TCPIP beat it out.

> 
> I'd sort of like a private X.25 cloud.

Not exactly sure what that means, but then I am not a fan of
"The Cloud" so it could be something simple I miss.

> 
>> I had a  lot of stuff I thought would be interesting with AX.25 but it 
>> seems everyone else got bored of it and with the advent of the 
>> Internet all but gave up.
> 
> *nod*
> 
> One of the reasons that I got into ham radio was the communications 
> ability that didn't depend on the Internet.

I saw that as a good idea, too.  But even in limited environments
it met a lot of resistance.  Back in the days before AX.25 I was
a big RTTY guy.  Probably because I did it professionally in the
Army for many years.  I was a Class C MARS station in the north
of Germany on my last tour there with the Army (1977-1979).  I
spent many nights relaying traffic from other remote MARS Stations
and the Gateway Station in Pirmasens, Germany.  When I came back
to the states I didn't continue with MARS.  Then after my Army
time ended and I was back home and doing packet including running
digipeaters with connections all over New England my dad, who was
a MARS operator and had seen my packet stuff (I once connected to
a VAX in central NJ from his home in Wilkes-Barre, PA using 1200
baud packet) asked me to come down to the PA MARS Conference at
Carlisle Barracks and talk to them about the capabilities of AX.25
in their environment.  I did.  I talked about the ability for
MARS, in conjunction with the Corps of Engineers, who have remote
radio sites all over the United States,  to set up a functional
data network not reliant on the phone system and that would remain
functional even during disasters.  They were impressed and convinced
me to join MARS again.  I did.  Less t6han a week after I got my
MARS Operating Permit I was contacted by the local (NEPA) MARS
Manager and told he was not interested in any network I had in
mind and he was the boss so I should just drop the iddea completely.
I never joined a net or filed a monthly report and my membership
eventually expired.  Remember what I said about NIH?  The same
was true when I tried to get TCPIP activity among the local Ham
Community. The had W0RLI BBSes (which actually were nothing but
existing old tech re-invented, badly) and had no interest in
anything more modern that CW.

> 
>> And don't get me started on the strong NIH syndrome that infected it. 
>> At least around where I was.
> 
> I don't get the Not Invented Here mentality.  I've long been a fan of 
> standing on the shoulders of giants.

See above.  :-)

bill
KB3YV
FN21hj

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#5

On 1/8/21 6:31 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> Prior to this the only traffic I have seen in any of the ham radio 
> groups has been garbage telling people (repeatedly ad nauseum) 
> to visit a web site to read about what they posted as a topic. 

I hate such posts.  Just post the content.  Even those types of sites 
can copy / relay / post the content.  But ... let's be honest, they 
aren't about the content, they are fishing (if not actually phishing) to 
draw people to the site.

> Worse than the last packet I saw which was DX Cluster Broadcasts. 
> (which, technically, should be illegal as they are broadcasts!)

I guess it depends what medium they are in.  As licensed ham 
transmissions (which are in and of themselves a "broadcast") is supposed 
to be a bidirectional communications between two or more individuals.

> And I have set up a scanner to cover all the 2 meter packet freqs 
> and never hear a thing.

I'm tempted to get out my old Realistic programmable scanner (presuming 
it made the cross country move) and start scanning the 2m range.

> I see local (well, within 10 miles of me) APRS activity if I look 
> online, but I have yet to figure out just what APRS is supposed to 
> be doing.  Not sure I want everyone to know where I am all the time.

What is your confusion about APRS?

My limited understanding is that it's supposed to give location -- 
presumably GPS coordinates -- for the person transmitting.

I don't think I'd want APRS as a norm.  But I can see it's value while 
hiking, mainly as a safety thing.  E.g.  Hey Bob, if you don't hear from 
me by such and such time, please have someone check on me.  I'll be 
broadcasting my location via APRS.

But definitely not as a norm.

> Played with both.  Think ROSE would have been nice but it never caught 
> on and never saw the activity that would have helped it develop into 
> something really usable.  NETROM is OK but has a few warts, too. 
> Howie-Code would have been nice, too,  but it got even less attention 
> that ROSE.

I don't think I've ever heard of Howie-Code.  I'll have to look it up.

> The only things I ever saw it running in were my DR-200 digipeaters. 
> I tried a few times to get the firmware from PACCOmm but, apparently, 
> they lost it.  I contacted Howie Goldstein N2WX a couple times but 
> could never convince him to release any of his code.  Too bad really 
> because it was a decent idea.Oh yeah, and then there is also TCPIP 
> but that kinda faded with real TCPIP on the Internet.  I assume by 
> now my address allocations are all gone.

I never viewed ham radio as a viable alternative to a traditional ISP 
connection.  I do consider it to be a backup.  But there are a number of 
limitations.  So, anyone that was using packet as an Internet connection 
quite likely moved on to something else if they could.  That likely just 
leaves the people messing with packet that actually want to mess with 
/packet/.

> If it had a chance it might have developed good routing, after all, 
> it is using the same concepts as the phone system and that seems to 
> route connections pretty well.  But it died on the vine just like 
> the rest of Packet Radio.

My current limited understanding is that NET/ROM used call signs as 
addresses.  Seeing as how call signs are effectively non-hierarchical, I 
don't think that NET/ROM could have scaled that well.  Or at least there 
would have eventually been a diminishing return.  ROSE on the other hand 
probably could have been configured in a hierarchical manner.

> Implementing AX.25 on top of X.25 seems rather silly as they are 
> the same basic protocol with differences to meet legal limitations.

The other way around.  X.25 (routed protocol) on top of AX.25 
(non-routed protocol).

> ROSE is the OSI Networking concept running on top of AX.25  instead 
> of X.25.

Hum.  I need to do some more reading.  My current understanding, save 
for your comment, is that ROSE is RATS Open Systems Environment, and 
that RATS is Radio Amateur Telecommunications Society.  And that it was 
an interoperable variant of X.25.

At least some of the reading that I've done in the last few days was 
explicitly talking about ROSE being switched with X.25.  But I can't 
readily point to anything specific at the moment.

> There are lots of good reasons to use OSI but in the industry TCPIP 
> beat it out.

Good enough vs purportedly perfect.  And that's being generous to OSI 
and Ethernet.

> Not exactly sure what that means, but then I am not a fan of "The 
> Cloud" so it could be something simple I miss.

In this case, the "cloud" is simply a collection of X.25 switches. 
Nothing in the 2000 teens sense of the word meaning someone else's ....

Some of the playing I do in my home lab could benefit from a local X.25 
switch that does not connect to anything outside of my home lab.

> I saw that as a good idea, too.  But even in limited environments 
> it met a lot of resistance.  Back in the days before AX.25 I was 
> a big RTTY guy.  Probably because I did it professionally in the 
> Army for many years.  I was a Class C MARS station in the north of 
> Germany on my last tour there with the Army (1977-1979).  I spent 
> many nights relaying traffic from other remote MARS Stations and 
> the Gateway Station in Pirmasens, Germany.  When I came back to the 
> states I didn't continue with MARS.  Then after my Army time ended 
> and I was back home and doing packet including running digipeaters 
> with connections all over New England my dad, who was a MARS operator 
> and had seen my packet stuff (I once connected to a VAX in central 
> NJ from his home in Wilkes-Barre, PA using 1200 baud packet) asked me 
> to come down to the PA MARS Conference at Carlisle Barracks and talk 
> to them about the capabilities of AX.25 in their environment.  I did. 
> I talked about the ability for MARS, in conjunction with the Corps of 
> Engineers, who have remote radio sites all over the United States, 
> to set up a functional data network not reliant on the phone system 
> and that would remain functional even during disasters.

Yep.  I really like the idea that the radio and associated equipment is 
relatively portable and can be set up just about anywhere.  As long as 
you have power to operate and can get a signal out to someone and they 
can get a signal back in to you, you're working.

> They were impressed and convinced me to join MARS again.  I did. 
> Less t6han a week after I got my MARS Operating Permit I was contacted 
> by the local (NEPA) MARS Manager and told he was not interested in 
> any network I had in mind and he was the boss so I should just drop 
> the iddea completely.  I never joined a net or filed a monthly report 
> and my membership eventually expired.

*sigh*

So it was "join our ranks" and "check your idea(s) at the door".  No 
thank you.

> Remember what I said about NIH?  The same was true when I tried to 
> get TCPIP activity among the local Ham Community. The had W0RLI BBSes 
> (which actually were nothing but existing old tech re-invented, badly) 
> and had no interest in anything more modern that CW.

Ya.  There needs to be a perceived /need/ for new things for people to 
really adopt them.  I'm somewhat guilt of the same.  There have been 
discussions of NNCP in other newsgroups, including someone prodding me 
to mess with it.  But, I don't have a /need/ for it.  As such, I'm 
somewhat reluctant to do so.  However, I am aware of it and discuss it 
with people.

There really is something to be said about people living in their own 
personal box.  And what is said is not always good.

> See above.  :-)

*nod*

73



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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#6

On 1/7/2021 12:55 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there anyone lurking in the packet radio newsgroups any more?
> 
> I'm looking for someone to chat with about AX.25 / Net/ROM, particularly 
> on Linux.
> 
> 
> 

Aye. Love me some X.25, Amateur Style

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#7

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Is there anyone lurking in the packet radio newsgroups any more?
>
> I'm looking for someone to chat with about AX.25 / Net/ROM,
> particularly on Linux.

I have an interest in getting a HAM license and trying my hand at packet
radio. It's a fascinating subject to me. I will read this thread with
great interest.

-- 
Daniel
Visit me at: gopher://gcpp.world

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#9

Hi Daniel,

On 2/2/21 1:14 AM, Daniel wrote:
> I have an interest in getting a HAM license and trying my hand at 
> packet radio. It's a fascinating subject to me. I will read this 
> thread with great interest.

I encourage you to get your license.

Feel free to ask -- either here or email -- if you have questions.  I'm 
happy to (try to) help.

I can highly recommend the ARRL's license manual.  --  Since you're just 
getting started, you are looking at Technician.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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#10

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> writes:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> On 2/2/21 1:14 AM, Daniel wrote:
>> I have an interest in getting a HAM license and trying my hand at
>> packet radio. It's a fascinating subject to me. I will read this 
>> thread with great interest.
>
> I encourage you to get your license.
>
> Feel free to ask -- either here or email -- if you have questions.
> I'm happy to (try to) help.
>
> I can highly recommend the ARRL's license manual.  --  Since you're
> just getting started, you are looking at Technician.

Thanks guys, appreciate the helpful.

I do intend to do so, yes. One of my best bros suggested the very same
manual. He's been a ham guy since the late 70s and takes pride in his
speed morse skills.

I intend to engage everyone I can to get going. Just yesterday we were
talking about methods of deploying antennas without causing HOA
headaches (for him) and an eyesore (for me on my yard).

I'm thinking about running mine along the top of my fence horizontally.

Now's the time, I think, to get a license.
-- 
Daniel
Visit me at: gopher://gcpp.world

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#8

Daniel <me@sci.fidan.com> writes:
> I have an interest in getting a HAM license and trying my hand at packet
> radio.

Welcome, Daniel!  Feel free to post any questions as you prep for the exam.

Andy Valencia
Home page: https://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: https://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

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#11

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Is there anyone lurking in the packet radio newsgroups any more?
>
> I'm looking for someone to chat with about AX.25 / Net/ROM,
> particularly on Linux.

I am here, a new one actually. I don't have my ham radio license yet,
but plan on studying for it shortly.

I have a big interest in packet radio and getting started hosting my own
bbs and messaging rig. I know some hobbyists working on adapting some
interesting technologies to improve it.

-- 
Daniel
Visit me at: gopher://gcpp.world

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