I am getting active in the VHF/UHF world again after a long hiatus away.
A bit of history...
Back in the 1990's when I was active, packet radio was all the rage and my forte.
We had a thriving packet THENET network here in the Willmar area with a 100' high wide area node (MNWIL) out at the college and another on the Spicer Dietz Bros tower at 150' (MNSPI).
A UHF 9k6 baud backbone was constructed from Minneapolis to a high natural site near Cold Spring. That node fed St Cloud, Little Falls to the north and Willmar to the south.
We had from 1 to 3 BBS services going at any time which were tied into the world network so you could "e-mail" other hams all over the world. We also seen our first "flame wars" there, a precursor to today.
Several local hams had a personal computer attached serially to a TNC (packet modem). The modem has transmit, receive audio, built in PTT and connects to a 2m transceiver or even handheld.
That was all you needed to get on the air. We had a blast!?
Fast forward to today - the Internet made packet radio seem obsolete and it evaporated.? Ironically, in the packet era, the Internet was the Holy Grail.
I discovered there was an active 2m 1k2 baud node operating in Willmar on 145.670 called WILMAR.
I had some issues using it until I figured out it would only do a full connect if I used the alias WILMAR. I was trying to use the callsign associated WB0MNU-15. That doesn't do anything but connect and wait for a password or something.
The rest of the MN network is at least 2 hops away during the day, and may be better at night. However, a local node allows the locals to either keyboard to keyboard qso or e-mail to other's personal mailboxes using modest antennas and power.
Since most hams today don't have TNC modems, I'm experimenting with a software packet package called Direwolf. So far, I've found it works great to receive, but haven't the additional program(s) for full TNC capability located - yet.
I am going to try make the Oct club meeting and meet the gang.
73
Mike Berg N0QBH
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N0QBH Mike Berg