As hams today we’re blessed with a multitude of modes from CW to SSTV. We have the opportunity to explore a wide variety of technical challenges and utilize a diverse set of tools for personal enjoyment and in support of our community. Though most of us utilize phone operations as our primary mode I hope to make the case in this post that packet operations is an important tool we should all have in our toolkit.
Packet modes and operations have been around for a long time. If you’re like me you may be old enough to remember the days before the internet, or at least the early days of the internet. In those days we often communicated with each other through bulletin board services (BBS) or similar message transfer systems.
Logging into a BBS, either by telephone or radio, allowed you to leave messages for your friends and colleagues to read. They could pick up those messages at their leisure and reply when they had an opportunity. Before the internet these services were common.
Today, with the growth of the internet these simple messaging services, like the BBS, have been replaced with the ability to send text and email at will and largely gone are the days of the bullet board service and the need to communicate through them.
Unfortunately, living in a rural area the internet isn’t always readily available. Simply drive down any of our country roads and look at the bars on your phone and you will quickly realize that the convenience of sending either a text or email isn’t always possible.
This is where the case for packet radio is strongest.
Today’s packet radio tools include old school BBS functionality but go well beyond that technology. You can use tools like WinLink and APRS to send and receive messages directly where internet service might not exist. Messages can be sent to either a peer (someone else with packet radio tools) or a non-ham who might be in a place that has internet service. The ability to communicate without the internet gives ham radio operators unprecedented power to connect to the communications grid when needed and communicate with friends and family or render life saving support in the times of emergency. In the event the communications grid is unavailable packet radio stands as a tool that can continue to provide messaging when or modern infrastructure can’t
Did I hope to convince you that packet radio was a critical tool for you to use in just one blogpost? Not really.
But I do hope that this interests you enough to look at existing and future posts on this forum, like those from KB4TAD and KI4AMD.
‘73 Shane KN4RBS
PS - If you've read this far then you should know that I plan to post a lot more about packet radio and why it should be important to you!
I remember when IFLOWS rain gauges used to communicate by packet around 171 mhz. When, thanks to amateur radio, I finally got the ability to decode them they switched either to satellite or cellular. I haven't heard an IFLOWS packet in a long time.
Great post! I also remember the days before the internet and it's great that these tools are available which allows us to have messaging functionality without depending upon commercial infrastructure.