On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 07:33:43 -0600, me6 wrote:

So it is possible, but you're going to have fork out some coin
to make it happen.

I see

But is there any PEOPLE to converse with using such methods?


There certainly was a number, several years ago, however,
since it has been a few years since I had communicated
via packet (I still intend to set it all back up sooner
or later, but apartment life is somewhat restrictive with
regard to antennas, sigh)

I just did a dig for one of the portals I used to use
and it is still up and running, with active users.

I am not sure how wide spread it is, the heard list used
to be much longer.

I mean.... a good analogy is this..... if you are the only one in your
town who has a telephone.... but no one else has one.... then no
matter how great the telephone is its pretty much useless cause its
only used to converse or "connect" with other people. See my point?

Now as to how many people are conversing this way, I am not sure, I used
to do so quite regularly, and will have my systems all set up
again within the next couple of months.

Do a web search for ham packet -- internet gateways in your area,
he

http://www.qsl.net/ik5bcu/list.htm

is a list I just brought up on google, though I have no idea
how recent it is.

several of the systems show up with nslookup and dig, and
hamgate.ve7sfu.ampr.org is still live as of this evening.
Though showing up with dig/nslookup is no indicator of a ham
gateway still being active, my own shows up, and I haven't
been up for at least three years.

Some of the gateway ops may be willing to set you up a feed,
I had several stations in the area I fed with packet mailboxes,
news can easily be added (usually most ops only do the
ham radio groups).

Ken
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Linux user
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mv sco /dev/null
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