user wrote in
:

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:48:18 -1000, Joseph Fenn
wrote:
Can someone advise me if I have the correct freqcys on 2 meters for
VHF Packet. I was told 145.01 145.03 145.05 (are commonly used for
VHF Packet). While I have done all my Packet on MARS freqcys for
last 50 years or so, I recently resigned and have hardly ever
gotten on the Ham bands. I use A C128 computer and the German
packet software called "DIGICOM V5".
Is it legal to turn on your Beacon say with a setting of every 30
mins?
Joe/KH6JF


Those were common VHF packet frequencies... 15 years ago. :-)

Since then, VHF packet has been dead for a decade in most areas
of the U.S. The once wide-spread packet networks fell apart pretty
quickly once the Internet became popular.

Which is a shame, because, in a real emergency a lot of those Wifi ports
will close up due to lack of power, internet connectivity or both.

There's still an active set of Rose switches here in BC, covering a good
part of the southern part of the province and Vancouver Island. We're
also blessed with a couple of good full duplex digipeaters that give
wide-area coverage without a lot of hidden nodes. The one on 145.07
(input 145.67) is really quite good. You don't need to mention the
digipeater's call in your connection unless you're linking out to the UHF
side.

Hidden node collisions were ALWAYS the problem in VHF and UHF packet. If
the politics had been better, most of those could have been eliminated
through the use of full duplex digipeaters and full duplex exclusive two-
way backbones between nodes.


--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667