MOFW! My One Foot Wife!

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Attention Cat Lovers! The other day, I picked up a Sony PSP-300x camera for the Sony Play Station Portable. This is a Japanese import that I purchased at a local Play and Trade video game outlet which comes packaged with the camera itself, a set of instructions laid out in every language except English and a proprietary UMD or Universal Media Disc (like a miniature encased DVD) containing editing software for both static and moving images. This software is written in Japanese. However I downloaded an English language version some time back identified as GO Edit! At this point, the image quality seems on par with cellphone cameras but as I master the finer points, if any, I may be able to produce better quality shots.

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SO! In various virtual locations within the bodies of either this real blog, my fake blog or via subsidiary commentaries posted on vehicles such as Twitter or 73s, I have made occasional reference to MOFW My One Foot Wife. And indeed! What a wife she is! Like many wives. Bossy! Pushy! Demanding! Always Nagging! Always Hungry!

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I took the above shots in ambient room lighting but didn't care much for the reddish yellowish overtones which I was subsequently not able to sufficiently filter out using third party image modifying software so I reduced them to black and white, boxed them and framed them for display. The shots are not the greatest but here she is: MOFW! My One Foot Wife Suzie at 16 human years of age!

What's This? An Altered State!

Much like my voluminous library of sound effects, I have somehow managed to build up an equally overwhelming pile of images of all sorts. On occasion, something simple comes in and I will make alterations. Perhaps I was a tailor in a previous existence, but now instead of cloth, it's the five or seven senses, depending on where you're from.

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So here a be a simple image that has been radically altered. What do you think it was before I got my software on it?

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Seen the Price of Stamps? Yikes! E-Mail Us Already!

Here, in no particular order, are a few recent e-mail requests for an Official This Week in Amateur Radio QSL Card. The more traditional pathway of writing a reception report and mailing it to: This Week in Amateur Radio Post Office Box 30, Sand Lake, New York 12153 has given way in recent years to an e-mail request sent to n2fnh@capital.net. So, whether you receive the program over your local VHF or UHF repeater, copy the show over WBCQ or download the latest weekly Internet Podcast, you can get your own TWIAR QSL Card by taking pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. either way works!

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February 17, 2009
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This Week in Amateur Radio
P.O. Box 30
Sand Lake, New York 12153
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Dear TWIARi,
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Greetings from Brampton, Ontario, Canada! I would like to report reception of your program from station WBCQ, broadcasting on 7415 khz on February 15, 2009 from 21:00-22:00 hrs.UTC. I am using a Grundig G6 receiver and its telescopic antenna indoor located in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. The SINPO rating is 54344.
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The broadcast was overall good. I was listening to the program This Week in Amateur Radio International. I find the program very interesting.
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Program Details:
21:00 Station ID, TWIAR INTL program commences. Amateur radio and UFOs,Area 51, Random access thought, ancient amateur archives by W2X2Y,A talk about computers. Topic on Amateur radio in schools. 22:00 hrs station ID
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I find your program very informative.I would like to receive your special edition QSL for this broadcast.
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Please confirm reception with a QSL card, a pennant, sticker and your program schedule. Thank you very much.
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Joel Baile
63 Sweet Clover Crescent
Brampton,Ontario L6R 3A1 Canada e-mail:jabyet@yahoo.com.

As It Was In 1998: Packet's Radio's Best Kept Secrets! The Double Oak Story!

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So while tacking my way through the shoals and tidal inlets of the great Digital Sargasso Sea, I took a moment this past Sunday afternoon to click on http://archive.org/ This remarkable location is just one of a number of online virtual libraries that harvests and houses all sorts of Internet flotsam, including complete web pages that date back in time to at least 1996.
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I then looked up http://nobleharbor.com/ which, among other things, is a personal shrine to the art of Tea as hosted by Tim Maxwell KA2PKH. I also recalled that Tim used to have a few copies of my now defunct TELNET NEWS packet radio newsletter ranging from 1998 to 2000 posted on his site and sure enough, they were still accessible. This was a significant find since a now archaic Toshiba Satellite laptop in my possession harbors the entire TELNET NEWS documentation with one minor glitch. In it's current state, the computer does not see the floppy drive. Maybe a corrupt driver, maybe not. I'll get around to it one day.
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Anyway, in 1998, I was already performing a monthly special segment for George Bowen's This Week in Amateur Radio but this was well before the installation of the Random Access File and Random Access Thought programs which I currently produce. In fact, those features focused mostly on amateur packet radio from the user's perspective, especially with regard to the overlap between various regional AX25 radio networks and access to the Internet from those networks.
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What follows is radio copy dated October 31st, 1998 detailing a then existing packet environment deep in the heart of Texas. Whether any these network devices still exist, I must admit I have not taken the time to verify but if you have a nifty client such as the last and best version of Winpack version 6.80 or any other functional telnet program, go see!
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---
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Hello George, Here's copy for the next packet installment for TWIAR. n2fnh/Bill.
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Coming up next on This Week In Amateur Radio, ME! N2FNH! With more on those amazing packet Internet Gateways. Don't you dare touch that dial!
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Hello there! It's me again! N2FNH with more on those amazing Packet Internet Gateways. Listen, I have a three-year old son. His name is Zachary. And Zachary LOVES trains. This kid has more train toys than AMTRAK and CONRAIL have rolling stock. You name it, he's got it. Everything from amazing remote control jobbies to all those little Thomas The Tank Engine bits, pieces and parts. When he gets a little older, I plan to take my son, the train expert, to the Mecca of all train stations, Grand Central Station in New York City where we can convene and converse with our fellow trainiacs, co-passengers, concessionaires, the bums who pee in the street and all the other denizens who live and work in the bowels of one of Gotham City's best known landmarks.
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Thinking about Grand Central Station somehow got me to thinking about packet radio, the Internet and all kinds of crazy communications networks. How I made this mental segue still mystifies me but it does give me the chance to profile a kind of Grand Central Station I discovered in the world of packet Radio. There's a guy named Larry Story who lives down in Double Oak, Texas. He's a professional airline pilot who is also an enthusiastic amateur radio operator who loves the digital domain. His call is WB5CQU and he runs a gateway using JNOS software that bridges the Internet with not one, not two, not three but four different types of packet networks, not to mention the local neighborhood AX25 stuff. Larry's system allows the user access not only to the usual local NETROM environment but also entry into a regional system known as the ROSE X25 Network. There is also access to another protocol called TEXNET, as well as a solidly established TCPIP collective.
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There are a few ways to access WB5CQU. If you are currently connected to another Packet Internet Gateway, then check your nodes list and look for the alias IPCQU. If it's there, then try the usual NETROM connect. If it works, you will be seen by IPCQU as an amateur radio link and should allow you full access. If you decide to telnet in from your gateway or from your Internet service provider, you will need to send a message to: wb5cqu@wb5cqu.ampr.org after you login requesting access to the site. It usually takes a day or so to get the nod of approval. Right now, the way IPCQU is configured, Larry is using a point To point protocol or PPP connection to the Internet. What this means is that you must use Larry's domain name to establish the telnet session rather than the 32-bit IP address. With the PPP connection, Larry's server is operating with something called dynamic IP addressing which means the numeric address tends to change from session to session. Although the IP address changes, the domain name does not. Should you get a busy signal from IPCQU, hang out for a few minutes and then give it another go. So the address to remember is: IPCQU.DYN.ML.ORG or INDIA PAPA CHARLIE QUEBEC UNIFORM dot DELTA YANKEE NOVEMBER dot MIKE LIMA dot OSCAR ROMEO GULF.
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Once you are in, take the time to really scope out IPCQU. Check the nodes lists, the ports lists and the IH lists. Check out the message areas for updates on the ROSE X25 Network and the emerging FPAC protocol. Larry tells me FPAC is an extension of the ROSE standard and appears designed to replace the existing software. Also scan the hard drive with that W command for even more information. You will need it because the ROSE and TEXNET local area networks have different command structures. They're easy to learn but there are some differences. The fun, for me at least, was to actually discover and try out these network protocols that I could only read about in those two ARRL best seller publications, "Your Packet Companion" and "Practical Packet Radio".
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Here's how Larry describes the ROSE protocol in one of his text messages: The ROSE X25 Packet Switch is a replacement for the common digipeater or other node switching EPROM. The ROSE Switch represents the latest state of the art in Packet Networking technology using international standard protocols. The ROSE switch is the first Amateur Packet Networking program to use International Standard protocol known as CCITT X25. The program is burned into a EPROM and placed in any of the standard TNC2 clones. This EPROM replaces the standard system chip in the TNC.
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The ROSE X25 Packet Switch offers some interesting features:
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HOP by HOP Acknowledgements between Switches providing higher reliability and throughput.
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A 9600 BAUD or higher BACKBONE that is completely Transparent to the user.
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VIRTUAL addressing. The user only needs to know the address at the exit point and not all the intermediate steps.
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DYNAMIC route selection. The Network will automatically attempt other alternate paths if a link is down.
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PREDETERMINED Network paths. The network will not attempt impossible links that are heard during a band opening.
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SUPPORTS all packet protocols including TCPIP, NETROM and AX25.
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Larry goes on to say that an organization called the Radio Amateur Telecommunications Society or RATS were the developers of this networking system which currently stretches from Texas to Oklahoma as well as Florida, Louisiana, Michigan and Illinois. I have also found other ROSE networks in places like New Jersey and a few localities in France. I spent a few nights playing with the WB5CQU system and figured out the commands necessary to navigate both the ROSE and TEXNET systems. I should also say that the TEXNET protocol appears to be a cross between the common NETROM networks and ROSE is designed to be a reliable high speed networking system that meshes well with the coexisting ROSE environment. Once I was familiar with the networks, I then took the opportunity to establish some really enjoyable keyboard QSOs with the good folks who live the Double Oak area. From all this experimenting, I made two really good friends over the IPCQU Packet Gateway. They are Bonnie KC5MSV and her brother Terry KC4EYD who lives near Jacksonville, Florida. I've been QSOing with Bonnie and Terry for just about two years now. In fact, we even took it a step further for a couple of voice QSOs over the Internet using VoxChat. And that's really what this is all about. There are thousands of Packet to Internet Gateways in some 100 countries around the world and much of your time will be spent negotiating with other computers but the best fun is using all that technology, all that gear, all that stuff to get your digital self all the way over to somebody else's keyboard for the sole purpose of saying Hello! Bon Jour! Saludos! Shalom! Merhaba! or just plain old How the heck are ya? with another guy or gal who digs the Ham Radio scene as much as you do!
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And that's it for this time around. Remember: "Today the Network! Tomorrow the World!" This is Bill Baran N2FNH saying 73 for This Week In Amateur Radio!
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-30-

Shop The Union Label! These? Doubtful...

From the RATFILES Circa 2004: Linnix, Lynux...Whatever!

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Editor's note: The Random Access Thought and the Random Access File can be heard in produced form, complete with expensive licensed sound effects, exclusively over This Week in Amateur Radio, North America's premier amateur radio audio news bulletin service, heard on hundreds of VHF and UHF repeaters around the world. This Week can also be downloaded in various audio formats by clicking on http://www.twiar.org/ What follows is a text script for a RAT which should available Saturday evening April 24th, 2004.
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The other day while I was perusing various items for bid on EBAY, my inner voice, my alter ego,a voice from the id, decided to pop up up like a lousy two bit Internet ad:
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BILL?
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Yes?
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DID YOU SEE PAGE 92 OF THE MARCH 2004 QST?
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No, not yet.
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YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT.
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OK, I will.
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DO IT NOW!
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You know you're very pushy.
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YES, I KNOW.
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OK, so I'm reading already. I see it's the Digital Dimension column by Stan Horzepa WA1LOU. It's about going online with Linux. What am I looking for?
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YOU KNOW YOU'RE MISPRONOUNCING THAT NAME.
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Yeah? So what do you say, Linnux?
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I DID, UNTIL I READ THAT ARTICLE. LOOK TOWARD THE END WHERE IT SAYS: HOW DO YOU SAY LINUX. GO AHEAD AND READ IT!
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You know you're very pushy.
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YES, I KNOW.
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Why don't you read it yourself?
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OK, I WILL, SO LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY!
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HERE IS SOME LINUX TRIVIA. THERE ARE VARYING OPINIONS ON HOW TO PRONOUNCE LINUX. I HAVE HEARD THE 'LIN' IN LINUX PRONOUNCED WITH A SHORT 'I' AS IN 'LINDA' AND WITH A LONG 'I' AS IN 'LINE'. BOTH ARE INCORRECT. ACCORDING TO LINUS TORVALDS, THE FATHER OF LINUX, THE 'I' IN LINUX IS PRONOUNCED LIKE A LONG 'E', THAT IS 'LEE-NUX'. GO TO http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/ AND HEAR LINUS PRONOUNCE IT HIMSELF.
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So Boys and Girls, today's lesson is. It's not Linnix. It's not Lynux. Now get this. It's Leeeennix. Leeeeeeeeeenix. Did you get that? Leeeeeeeeeeeenix!
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SEE, I WAS RIGHT.
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You know you're very pushy.
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YES, I KNOW!

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THE FNH UPDATE: Fortunately, it appears the above address is still valid :)

In The Shape Of A Square...

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From the RAT FILES Circa 2004: The Dead Are Among Us! The Dead Are All Around Us!

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The following was originally composed as radio copy for air in May of 2004 in a feature entitled THE RANDOM ACCESS FILE over THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO, North America's premier amateur radio audio news service. Please click on the following http://www.twiar.org/ for additional details.
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The dead are among us. The dead are all around us. The dead reside in our attics. The dead lie buried within our basements. The dead are parked in our living rooms, lodged in our bedrooms and concealed in darkened back corners in our places of work.
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The dead are among us. The dead are all around us. There are corpses to be found everywhere. But they did not decompose. Nor did they rot. Nor did they go rancid. Or grow fetid with age. As you might expect. More than likely, they may have rusted badly or they may have simply become dusty or dirty or possibly moldy or grimy or gunky at the very worst. But the dead among us. They never lived to begin with. But they may have provided a valuable service or perhaps a pleasant mood.
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Case in point: In the attic space above me in this very house, even as I now write, several multi hued plastic milk crates are stuffed chockful of paper cardboard sleeves, festooned with colorfully creative and in some cases, outrageous psychedelic artwork. And inside those sleeves, large twelve inch diameter black and shiny and often slightly warped but otherwise nominally flat, grooved plastic vinyl discs with a little hole in the center, specifically designed to rotate on a motorized platter precisely at 33 and a third revolutions per minute and to make a sound which would come out of two speakers in such a way that the effect was to be called "stereo".
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And in those same multi hued plastic milk crates, many smaller though quite similar seven-inch diameter plastic discs with a much larger hole in the center, made to spin a little faster at a speed of 45 RPM. Why, there are even a few additional discs made of some kind of heavy Shellac or Acetate. Their nominal speed of rotation was set to 78 RPM, although this was really supposed to 78.26 revolutions per minute, so I am told.
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All dead. Things that don't play anymore. Dead media. Early analog software with now very hard-to-find hardware to play them on. More than likely your own Victrola, your own record player doesn't work anymore and the cost to replace that hardware with what few record players that are still being manufactured is beyond belief. And thanks to current technology and the widespread cheap availability of digital compact discs and MP3 players, the lowly, low quality audio cassette is now on death row, doomed to extinction as is the equally lowly and equally low quality video cassette. The message is clear for videotape since you can go to WalMart and buy VCRs for under $49 and formatically transitional hybrid VCR-DVD players for maybe twice that amount. The once and future LP and EP is now the now and soon to once CD and DVD.
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And where are you hiding your laserdiscs and attendant laserdisc players? Did you get any bids on eBAY? Did anyone give you five bucks for them at your local garage sale? You and I both know they are corroding away in spiderweb enshrouded damp and moldy cardboard boxes in your cellar. It's just our dirty little secret. No one else need know.
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And what of the office secretary's most valuable friend and formidable ally? That gallant and valiant prince of print, the ultimate analog communications medium, the typewriter, terminated without pay! The IBM...retired! The Olivetti...expired! The Smith Corona...recycled and melted down into molten slag! Collateral damage includes carbon paper, the very bane of those very same secretaries and those equally messy mechanical marvels, the Mimeograph and the smudgy purple Ditto machine.
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In fact, the secretaries themselves have become a dead medium. Alas, not only analog but also expensive to run, almost all of these lovely ladies laid off and replaced with a onetime investment in a little black box which answers the office telephone with its cloying and annoying digital voice that says: PRESS 1 for residential services. PRESS 2 for business services. Or stay on the line for the next available representative. Estimated serve time: 61 minutes and 19 seconds - Please hold!"
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Other communications media were tried and died. Stop to think: The town crier...fired! Smoke signals...faded! Only the Vatican still uses smoke signals. Two colors: white and black for new Pope and dead Pope related information. The passenger pigeon,finished and extinct! Back in 1849, the Reuters News Service actually had a functional pigeon-delivered stock-price reporting network but now? Grounded! The Morse telegraph, a big deal in 1837, a dead deal in 2004. Although thousands of amateur radio operators still employ the Morse code as a means of communication, virtually every business, government and military agency has forsaken those sinusoidal continuous waves. Why, do you realize that the American Radio Relay League Radiogram is indeed a dead medium? The Internet and e-mail has effectively blown away that method of information transfer.
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Some dead media continue to claw for life in highly specialized environments. Like the rare sea-faring Marine Iguana, found only on the remote shoals of the Galapagos Islands, the pneumatic transfer tube is a now-archaic technology that curiously can be found only within the concrete shade of the savings bank teller drive-through window but nowhere else.
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Meanwhile, there may still be a few DATs, not bats but DATs, that is, Digital Audio Tape machines that may still be flourishing in the back rooms of some sound studios and post-production houses but DAT never got a toe hold in households. Some future media came into this world stillborn and never got off the ground. Witness the the promise of the Bell System PicturePhone unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair: DOA man! Dead on arrival.
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Some species of dead media simply refuse to die. Go to any Chinese laundry in New York City and find an abacus in prominent daily use. The abacus has been traced back to ancient Egypt as far back as 500 BC and is still here. Meanwhile,many old people live on in quiet desperation in their rent stabilized apartments with their out of date Bakelite rotary dial telephones which can be of no use when the digital voice on the other end of the line intones:"PRESS 1 for residential services."PRESS 2 for business services. Or stay on the line for the next available representative. Estimated serve time: 2 days, 14 hours, 5 minutes and 42.3 seconds. Please hold!"
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While I was a resident in the little town of Sand Lake in upstate New York, my local barber shunned both ancient mechanical and futuristic computerized cash registers in favor of the ultimate dead medium for handling currency, counting the cash and coin using his hands and counting it correctly and storing it all in a cardboard shoebox! Like money, the deceased can be tallied in legion numbers, an endless list that includes such things as slide rules. Electronic calculators did Murder One on that device.
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Little cheap chip-sets have made obsolete all those plastic Chatty Cathies, Teddy Ruxpins and other talking dolls that relied solely on a string pulled plastic disc for playback. Another casualty, a low tech toy that I still own, 2XL, a wisecracking little plastic robot with a Brooklyn accent and a flair for being educational to children could not match the Speak And Spell master chip with his own custom made eight track tapes.
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And how about those Eight track tapes. Those four track tapes. Those two track PlayTapes. Those BetaMax Video tapes. Those UMatic professional 3/4 inch videocassettes. Those weird boxy little video broadcast cartridges. Those weird boxy little Fidelipac audio broadcast cartridges. Those monster 2 inch Quad reel to reel video tapes. Those Quadraphonic four channel sounds, both discrete and matrix. All outmoded, deep sixed in dumpsters, entombed in landfills. Or up for bid on eBAY! Even the stereo optical ViewMaster, a child's gem of the 1960s is invalid.
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In the unreal, surreal and sometimes, all too real, universe of motion pictures, the lumbering Vitaphone record player gave way to the clanky 35 millimeter magnetic film machine or the smoothly spinning magnetic tape machine that came in various tape widths and inch per second speeds, all of which were surpassed by hard drive or optical drive workstations where the mere idea of working with magnetic media is seen as being akin to playing with little strips of plastic littered with rust. And whatever happened to Cinerama and Cinemascope anyway? And whatever happened to those Bell and Howell eight millimeter home movies? And whatever happened to those Bell and Howell Super eight millimeter home movies? Gone! And forgotten! So much dead media! Things that don't play anymore. So many impossible to find devices! The list never ends.

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Some final considerations: Whistling networks where guys actually hooted really loud in an effort to span vast mountains and valleys with their mouth noises. And how about those humongous Alpenhorns like you see in those old Riccolo TV commercials? The Pony Express, the U.S. Army's Myer Code Semaphore system, a circa 1860 technology and other things like the A.T.&T. wire photo, big in 1925 and the RCA Radio Photo equally big in 1926. Wire recorders, my Uncle Fred had one of these. It was big! It was bulky! It smelled funky! But it was cool! Toss in those 16-inch diameter aluminum transcription disks, some Magic Lanterns, a few Elcassettes and a couple of Atari 400s. Oh, don't forget DOS and Windows 3.1, 95 and 98. All dead! dead! dead! The dead...are among us. The dead...are all around us. The dead are still here. And now, this monologue is dead too. This is Bill Baran N2FNH for This Week in Amateur Radio.
- 30 -

Business Cards!

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Dead Media! Funny Sounds! And Cigarettes!

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This week's Random Access Thought is an encore performance featuring the return of the THE DEAD ARE AMONG US Guy with more announcements of technological dead ends, including legacy devices like serial ports, the Western Union Telegram and primordial electronic organizers, such as the Sharp Zaurus and the Palm Pilot along with primitive video game consoles like the Nintendo Gameboy. The special feature first aired in April 2008 and features commentary from Marilyn Krasnov, her Mom Mother Radio (Beverly Krasnov) and her father Boleslov. Marilyn's enigmatic brother Cigman makes a cameo appearance in this Random Access Thought piece.
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As a sidebar, Cigman has been trying to quit smoking. For anyone out there who pays any attention to the intentionally obscure minutiae deposited deep within the RAT programs and promos and the QSL, Twitter and KXKVI commercials, Cigman was a three pack a day smoker,just like my Mother and Father were. Since December of last year, Cigman has avoided the cigs. Here's hoping that he won't relapse. It's tough being a smoker since in a recent promo announcing our KXKVI TWIAR podcast portal for wireless devices, Cigman and his sistu Marilyn are dining in a nice restaurant where smoking is certainly not allowed. It would appear that video games have replaced the butts.
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Speaking of TWIAR promos, I devised a new TWIAR QSL promo which features Bix, his father Mister Nix, Mother Radio and Marilyn. There is an inexplicable reference to gym shorts after Bix's shortwave radio vaporizes which goes largely unexplained. If you're curious about this audio neutrino, send me an e-mail.
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The electric shock vaporizing sound I created a few years back for my "When the Repeater Blows Up, Will Anyone Notice" RAT. To give the shock sound more meat, the effect was uber-compressed. The Mother Radio Whack Noise is actually a vintage Disney effect that I've tracked back to Peter Pan which I believe debuted in 1937. Nomadic sound editors apparently exported this clip across town to the UPA Pictures and Hanna Barbera sound effects libraries. This particular effect got some discussion in an animated cartoon forum which I took part in a while back.
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http://forums.toonzone.net/archive/index.php/t-184789.html
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The quasi-musical electronic backdrop behind Marilyn's QSL Card pitch was generated on a Nintendo DS Lite portable video game console using the KORG DS-10 Synthesizer program. These noises were then salad tossed in with other analogs that I had developed previously. The are two versions of the promo, one for TWIARi, the other for TWIAR. The differences are subtle but if you enjoy sound design, you may find it all quite interesting.

LONNY LINES!

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Many years ago, in the very early 1990's, I recall hearing a QSO on the local 147.12 RACES repeater where the topic of conversation was something called LONNY. Local hams were talking about connecting down to New York City and then connecting overseas to London. My personal knowledge of packet radio was nil and this was also just before the Internet burst forth as the Information Superhighway. The concept was quite intriguing but it was also clear from the content that there was some confusion as just how the LONNY infrastructure was laid out. By 1996, I was into the packet scene bigtime, quickly mastered the NEDA (North East Digital Association) network node maps, located useable although far flung packet-to-the-Internet gatways and discovered LONNY.
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Perhaps due to whatever genetic peculiarities I may harbor, I documented virtually every system I probed, scanned and employed. LONNY was no exception. I came across some text files I preserved from my exploration of this remarkable amateur radio communications system, along with an eventual death notice from one of LONNY's SysOps. These text files have been repaginated for display within the Blogspot message posting environment.
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LONNY SYSTEM OVERVIEW
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The LONNY system consists of 2 BPQ netrom nodes connected together at 9600Bd full duplex over a commercial data circuit. The London end is located in the NBC NEWS buro next to centre point (io91wk) the New York end ,30 Rockefeller Plaza central NY at NBC NEWS HQ. A further 9600 Bd wormhole also connects NY to Burbank in California. The node calls are LONNY GB7GBR-1,NYHUB WA2NDV-10 and BURBNK W6RCL-2 LONNY and NYHUB also have co sited BBS and TCPIP routers,#gbbbs gb7gbr,IPNBC gb7gbr-5,BBSNDV wa2ndv-4,NYTALK wa2ndv-9. All the nodes are fully integrated into their respective local packet networks,NYHUB and LONNY both supporting 2 9K6 links each to their neighbouring nodes plus other 1200Bd links. The data circuit is owned by NBC NEWS and the ham service is multiplexed into the primary 128KB data stream carrying the networks news computer links. The service is tolerated as the amount of data added by the amateur network is negligble relative to the main service. The circuit is carried over an undersea transatlantic fiber optic cable TAT9 with a back up path available via 56 kb ISDN dial up. The Lonny node and BBS run on a 386 33 mhz machine while IPNBC is running on a seperate 486 dx 66 machine. The system has been running for approximately 4 years continuosly and in the last year tcpip routing to an internet gate in New Jersey has further enhanced the available connectivity of the system. Users should be aware it is illegal for uk stations to originate msgs on USA BBS systems and vice versa. BBSNDV and GB7HSN forward twice hourly so launch your mail from the right side of the pond please. Equipment for the system is all donated by and maintained by local amateurs and the nbc radio club. In particular G1HSN and G4ZEK who both have invested substantial time and equipment in providing various Rf links and computer equipment.
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regards Julian (g4nqo sysop lonny UK)
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This system is co sited with the Lonny BPQ node/wormhole which is linked to WA2NDV-10 in New York USA on a private data circuit at 9600BD WA2NDV-10 has a 9k6 rf link to the internet gate k2mf-5 in New Jersey. LONNY has 2 9k6 rf links to g1hsn-1 and gb7me and IPNBC has 2 1200bd rf links on 4m linking to the catrad network and 6m user access with no links. Telnet connects from this site to any of the ham/internet gateways typically take 5-10 seconds sometimes less. All international tcpip traffic from this site routes via k2mf-5 44.64.20.2 If you wish to reach the IPBBC gateway please note telnet connections route to it via k2mf-5 (recommended as its fast). Alternatively you can use the RF path by connecting to g8lws-1 then IPBBC. An AXIP Link to IPBBC also runs from WA2NDV-10. To use that connect to NYHUB (wa2ndv-10) then connect to IPBBC. This will again route via k2mf-5. Due to differing route quality standards in the US and UK I do not advise you try netrom connects more than one node out from lonny to any UK nodes as many netrom routes are one way ie lonny is on node tables of nodes that don,t appear on lonny,s node table. Best go to WIGGY or MOTTHM or CATA40 or GB7ME and then netrom out further from those nodes. Avoid using the world wide converse server on IPNBC as it hammers the memory resources. This system provides international links for most of the SE UK if it crashes a lot of people are affected. Check NEWS and RULES for more help or info.
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***** DO NOT *****
Telnet to non 44. XX ie non ham ip addresses.
Multiple stream connect to or through this system
Access the IPNBC converse server unless your desperate
Converse link your converse system to IPNBC without asking
Access converse servers along way away..use your nearest one thats linked
Drag me or this system into pro/con debates on BBS,s
***** -X- *****
ENJOY
de G4NQO
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World Wide Converse in the UK
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The worldwide converse (WWC) is made up of numerous converse nodes around the world linked together over internet and amateur packet links. Generally the international links use very hi speed internet links while the links around a particular country utilise amateur packet links. A station logging onto a linked WWC node can expect to find anything upto several hundred stations logged on at any particular time on dozens of different logical channels.
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Obviously this amount of traffic generates huge amounts of data every frame of which must be successfully carried to every node on the network and if the system is to work correctly, be carried pretty damn quick. Consequently if we are all to enjoy this relatively new facet of packet
radio some simple rules should be followed to minimise the loading it imposes on the amateur network.
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1) Stay Local! use your nearest converse server. Each node you hop through to reach a converse server will have to carry the full converse load just for you. If you go the same route the converse links are already using you double the traffic load,jam the converse network and gain nothing..don,t do it...EVER!!!!!
2) Keep off the default channel 0. Its the busiest most chaotic thing you will ever see on packet
3) use the /w q command rather than /w. to see who,s connected.200 calls plus their names,qth,age,sex and the weather is an awful lot of traffic. Unless you have a very good link its unlikely the converse server will get all this info to you before it times out and dumps you. /w callsign will tell you a stations personal text on jnos systems.
4)You want to be a converse server? If so you will need to conv link your nos station to an exsisting converse server. Golden rules 1) ASK first! 2) make sure you have a fast reliable route. 3) Don,t link to two linked converse servers at the same time you will generate a converse loop and you will cause chaos ultimately someone will disconnect the converse link to the UK to maintain the service and its real embarrassing having to ask to be reconnected afterwards. Not too much to ask is it??
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73 Julian (sysop Lonny/ipnbc/gb7gbr)
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Message #16
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 16:00:37 +0000 (GMT)
From: Gareth Rowlands
To: all
Subject: *** LONNY CLOSEDOWN ***
Message-Id: 4430_GB7BBC
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Hi Lonny users
I have reluctantly decided to shut down the Lonny node RF ports for an indefinate period while various licence issues are addressed. To date i have tried to quietly keep abreast of of the various issues that have been raised on the packet network and the represnetations made to the DTI/RA/RSGB and have felt fairly confident of battling through but with the latest warning that BBS are restricted to operation from home addresses, the front end node restrictions, technical problems at the site and a lot of work going on I just havn,t got the time at the moment for something that is rapidly having all the fun taken out if by seemingly endless red tape..I,m an engineer not a pen pusher!all the best for now
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Julian (g4nqo sysop Lonny/IPNBC/GB7GBR)