Over the past month, I’ve been at work setting up a 2 meter BQP node here in Aurora, Colorado. I chose BPQ32 as it is full of features, is well supported, and is widely used. The nodes broadcast feature is attractive to me, as I think it would be cool to have an automatically generated list of nodes that are reachable from any one station.
I’m new to this mode and am learning something every day.
The node equipment:
- Kenwood D710G
- Intel NUC running linbpq on Ubuntu 20.04
- 20m/440 mobile antenna
The D710G is a great rig for packet, as it comes with a built-in TNC. The built-in TNC has basic BBS functionality, but nothing compared to what is offered by BPQ.
While the antenna is subpar for a fixed node, it’s the best I can do while living in an apartment. It’s mounted to the balcony rail using an MFJ-1907 balcony mount. This seems to work fairly well, and achieves a 1.2:1 VSWR on the local packet frequency, 145.050.
Packet radio in Colorado is very much alive and well. I only wish more folks broadcast their nodes list so that a more comprehensive list of local nodes could be built.
My hierarchical route is KD5LPB.#NCO.CO.USA.NOAM
I can be mapped in BPQ via MAP kd5lpb-7 node.kd5lpb.com UDP 10093 B; Aurora, CO