dna@dsd.UUCP (03/13/84)
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 1984 8:36 PM PST Msg: SGIE-1737-9022
From: TCLARK
To: amsat
Subj: Sucessful Packet Radio Gateway Activity Last Weekend
It gives me great pleasure to QSP the following msg -- you can't know
how exciting it was to be involved in the first Packet Radio Gateway
test (especially since AO-10 was at 1 degree elevation for me when we
did it!). -- Tom
- - - - - -
To: All packet radio stations
From: Hank Magnuski, KA6M
Subject: Oscar-10 Packet Gateway (Teleport) Experiments
On Sunday, March 11th, on orbit 560 of AMSAT/Oscar 10, KA6M in conjunction
with the following stations, successfully demonstrated the interconnection
of two packet radio stations with intermediate links using a terrestrial
packet repeater and two AO-10 groundstations. This is probably the first
all digital interlink experiment performed on the AMICON channel.
Those involved were
Tom Clark, W3IWI, Clarksville, MD (Washington, DC area)
Hank Magnuski, KA6M, Menlo Park, CA (San Francisco area)
Harold Price, NK6K, Redondo Beach, CA (Los Angeles area)
Jim Tittsler, AI8A/6, Los Gatos, CA (San Francisco area)
Ron McMurdy,WA0OJS/6, Monterey, CA (San Francisco area)
The first contact at 19:00 UTC was between W3IWI and WA0OJS. Tom was
working with a very low-on-the-horizon pass, had limited time, and so only
a short fragment of text made it in both directions. About an hour later,
at 20:05, NK6K successful chatted with AI8A for about ten to fifteen
minutes, in what almost seemed like a local QSO. In both connections
the intermediate links looked like this:
Remote satellite packet station (W3IWI or NK6K)
|
v
Oscar-10 Transponder (435.173 MHz. up, 145.830 MHz. down)
|
v
KA6M-0 satellite packet station in Menlo Park
|
v
1200 bps modem link to KA6M Packet Bulletin Board Computer in Palo Alto
|
v
KA6M-1 Packet port on Bulletin Board Computer (on 146.58 MHz.)
|
v
KA6M-2 Simplex Packet Repeater in Belmont (on 146.58 MHz.)
|
v
SFO area 2-meter packet station (WA0OJS or AI8A on 146.58 MHz.)
On both contacts text was transmitted in both directions. Error-checked AX.25
connections were maintained between the two satellite stations and between
the computer's packet port and the outlying users. However, over the
modem link only text was transmitted, and no packet protocol was employed.
Equipment included a mixture of TAPR and VADCG terminal node controllers.
A total of five TNCs had to be properly connected for all this to work.
Not suspecting that anything special was going on, Ron and Jim connected
to the computer system expecting to pick up their mail. Instead, they
found that they were connected directly to stations in remote
geographic areas, and the packets they were getting were coming from
outer space. No one was more surprised than I was when the first text
started to come through.
Hopefully, it won't be too long before this kind of operation becomes
routine.
73, Hank