I discontinued VHF packet about 15 years ago when it became obsolete in our area. A few people still used it for a while but now the trunk lines are gone and while some sites were converted over to APRS, long haul traffic is not possible. In the last week I did help a ham a little bit in trying get his PK232 on packet, but there is not much he can connect with anymore.
I never found HF packet to be useful since Amtor was much better at messaging under many conditions. Not that Amtor was so great either. Pactor was OK, as was Clover II, but that was when I discontinued all HF digital activities until the advent of the sound card modes. It is still amazing to me how well these modes work for keyboard contacts, although I admit some are very wide considering the throughput. At the moment, the most spectrum conserving mode seems to be Pactor 2. Relatively modest width and reasonable good throughput. The weak signal speed and capability is very close to or really the same as Pactor 3, so P3 holds minimal advantage when you approach zero dB S/N, which is not uncommon on HF. The fastest ARQ sound card mode is FAE at the moment. Because it uses an older 8FSK 125 baud modulation it is excessively wide for ham use, but it was designed to work on fixed channel widths and they filled the available space with the best technology trade off at the time. In my view, this mode needs to be replaced with something at or less than 500 Hz. Currently, FAE appears to be faster than Pactor 1, and can work deeper into the noise by a couple of dB, but is several times wider. The ARQ and the quasi full duplex capability is quite impressive in recent tests I have done. I am open to further testing (hint, hint). 73, Rick, KV9U John Becker, WØJAB wrote: > > ***So where do you stand on Packet. It's about as slow and wide as > well as out dated as it can get.. > > But as far as a ARQ sound card mode, the only thing I have seen was > a system that only could do 43.7% of what the TNC did. > > In other words, sent the traffic went out for lunch and still waited for > the none TNC system to get done. > > >
