Greetings OM;
PhazeVektor wrote to All <=-
Anyone ever mess with HF packet BBS? I haven't been active in the HR community for a while and figure that one day I'll get the fever and
pull my radio back out. I'm just curious about any recommended setups
and if there is an "active" BBS community anymore.
There's many who "claim" to be on HF and while they may have an HF port,
their software tends to force them to internet shortest path first. Very disheartening to say the least. It's amazing how many buy into the idea
that HF is used a lot more than it is.
When I was first licensed in the early 90s, VHF packet was alive around here, but I never knew it to exist on HF. I've seen a "prepper" site or two, but wasn't sure if it existed beyond that use case.
Here in the northeast USA, VHF/UHF is still what the primary mode of transport is using the flexnet protocol. This enables us to pull extra bytes from the protocol headers for data transport... with the end result making things appear faster. I closed my original dialup bbs in favor of a VHF/UHF packet bbs
system in the mid 90s. Needless to say I'm back here after a 30 year
absence! That should tell you something about the slow death of packet BBS. Most of the messages are robot posts and if there's a dozen a day that's excessive! There's a LOT more activity in echomail.
HF is more used for long-haul APRS... and it's better suited for that function since APRS uses UI frames. It's more like "I shot an arrow in the air where
it lands I know not where" and it won't keep retrying. Packet BBS use numbered frames and will retry x-amount of retries (10 usually) to receive an ack
packet that the frame was received... not ideal for HF.
Some BBS actually have doorways to their packet systems. That may be something for you to explore first to see if it's feasible getting something going in your neck of the woods. You may find an 802.11ham mesh at high speed to be
a lot more fun and interesting a design.
73
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