This Packet Racket

I’ve been playing around with packet, recently.

I’d read somewhere that it was beginning to make a bit of a comeback… I knew I’d hung on to that PK-88 TNC for a reason!

I connected it up to a little Yaesu 270R and had a play. It was only then that I realised just how much I’d forgotten. I used to be all over packet back in the day, but now I could barely remember any of the commands. But, with the help of the manual and some advice from a mate and a local amateur, it’s getting there.

I can connect to my mate’s node with little problem and also the one in Milton Keynes. I couls also easily connect to the node at the old MI6 place out near Aylesbury, but it seems to have gone off-air recently.

And I’ve got my mailbox set up again.  It was quite an exciting feeling to come into the shack the other morning and see the mailbox light flashing, indicating that there was a message waiting for me. That LED hasn’t flashed in 30 years!

I’m using the PC to talk to the TNC at the moment, via PuTTY (a terminal emulator program) and I have now configired it with  green text to give it that old dumb terminal retro look. For some reason, I’m loving it even more now!

I’m having a few connection issues though.  Reducing the packet size from 128bit to 64bit seems to have helped and also increasing the tx delay by 100ms. But I think a serious issue is a lack of audio level from the 270… something I’ll need to take a look at.

But, at the moment, I’m just having a lot fun playing with – and re-learning – some AX.25 stuff again.