Hi Dan,

OK so the next stage up from ax25 / packet radio is to put the old TNC in kiss mode and from Linux assign an IP address to the radio interface.

In Ham radio we have ampr.org which is a full class A subnet 44.0.0.0

it basically means you can build an IP network connected over normal ham radio 2 meters 70 cms or whatever.

Much slower but think wi-fi

given each radio station is now an IP address on a network, there is no reason to set ratflector to talk ax-25.

You set up ratflector to listen on port 9001 on your 44.x network (radio side) and get the other radio users to point the d-rats client over network to 44.x.y.z

The radios will key up and send the data back and forth

This will also work over the mesh (wi-fi) networks used by hams

I guess its much easier than ax25 as far as the ratflector goes and you should at least get tnc talking to the main d-rat server

How we span in to the d-star network I have no idea..

Cheers

James.