Background

Way back in the 80’s and 90’s I used to be very active on packet radio. I had a well-equipped shack in the good location (VHF-wise) and had links on VHF and UHF (70 cm and 23 cm).

As always, of course, life got in the way and I had to pack (sorry) all the packet stuff away. Then I moved to a new location down by the river here in St Neots with ridges on the west and north sides. The result is very poor VHF/UHF. I can get into my local repeaters – GB3OV and GB3PI – but that’s about it.

I’d pretty much forgotten about packet until I got involved with OARC during the COVID Lockdown. OARC has a very active Discord server with two channels devoted to packet radio. The result was a re-awakening of my interest and hence – eventually – this project.

What am I trying to do?

If you look at the Packet Link Map, you can clearly see that St Neots is in a bit of a desert as far as RF links are concerned. Apart from GB7BED, there’s nothing in VHF or UHF range, so the idea is to put something up that will serve the local HAM community and extend the UK Packet Network.

I’ll start with a test node that has local 1200 BPS access on VHF and Internet links to the rest of the network. Once this proves the concept, I’ll build a second node that will (hopefully) be located in a better location. If this is successful, I’ll add a 70cm 9600 BPS link and maybe an HF 300 BPS link. The latter will most likely be delivered via my Remote Shack