Packet node · Riyadh, Saudi Arabia · LL34IT
An experiment in building web pages and digital resources sized for the way radio amateurs actually reach them — over narrow, slow, unreliable links, often on old equipment. Most of the modern web assumes a fast connection and a current browser. Packet radio assumes neither. This station is an attempt to put useful material on the other side of that gap, and to make the crossing easier in both directions.
The page you are reading is part of that. It carries no images, no scripts and no external stylesheet, so it arrives in one request and a few kilobytes. It renders in anything, including browsers old enough to vote.
| Operator | Khalid Alshaikh, 7Z1FP |
| Location | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — grid LL34IT |
| Frequency | 144.850 MHz, 1200 baud AX.25 |
| Transceiver | Icom IC-9700 |
| HF | 21.115 MHz USB dial, VARA HF, 0600-1400 UTC |
| HF transceiver | Icom IC-7300 |
| TNC | Dire Wolf 1.8.1 — software modem, sound card |
| Node | BPQ32 — 7Z1FP-7, alias KHALID |
| BBS | 7Z1FP-8, alias KHLBBS |
| APRS | beaconing to APRS-IS via asia.aprs2.net |
To reach the node by radio, connect to 7Z1FP-7 on 144.850 MHz. Type BBS at the prompt for the message board, or INFO for the station notice. Nothing on this web page travels over the air — HTTP is far too heavy for 1200 baud — so what you receive on the radio is plain text, and deliberately so.
The IC-9700 is now integrated with Dire Wolf and BPQ32, and the node is running: a software TNC feeding a full AX.25 node and message store, with an internet-side connection alongside the radio side. Packet activity in Riyadh has been quiet for a long time, and I am realistic about this — for the moment this is very likely a station calling into an empty band.
That is an acceptable place to start. A network of one is still a network that works, and it is a great deal easier for a second station to appear when there is already something there to answer. My hope is that others follow, because the value of packet is not in any single node but in the mesh: several independent stations, each able to pass traffic when the others cannot, is infrastructure that keeps working when ordinary infrastructure does not. That resilience is the whole point, and it cannot be built alone.
If you have never done packet radio, this is the whole thing. It takes an evening and costs nothing beyond a cable.
Any 2 m radio, a computer, and something to carry audio both ways with a wire that keys the transmitter — a Digirig, a SignaLink, or a homebrew cable. No hardware TNC. Your sound card is the modem.
Dire Wolf turns your sound card into a 1200 baud modem. Free,
and it runs on Windows, Linux and the Raspberry Pi. In
direwolf.conf only three lines matter:
MYCALL YOURCALL ADEVICE (your audio interface) PTT (whatever keys your radio)
Run it. It prints every packet it hears, so you will know immediately whether your receive side works.
QtTermTCP is the one I would pick — written by John Wiseman, who also writes BPQ32, and it talks to Dire Wolf over the radio and speaks Telnet, so one program covers everything. EasyTerm by UZ7HO is a good Windows alternative.
Point it at Dire Wolf on 127.0.0.1 port 8000
(AGW). That connection runs inside your own computer, not over the air.
FM, no tone, no offset. Set the volume so Dire Wolf reports an audio level near 50.
C 7Z1FP-7
Your radio transmits, my node answers, and you get:
KHALID:7Z1FP-7}
Type BBS. You will get a menu. From there:
| READ START | every command, explained |
| READ OP | who you are talking to |
| READ EMERGENCY | emergency numbers and my frequencies |
| READ MAP | where I am in Riyadh |
| S 7Z1FP | send me a message — finish with /EX on a line by itself |
That last one catches everybody once. Nothing sends until /EX
appears alone on a line.
Everything arrives at about 150 bytes a second and you watch it paint down the screen. That is not a fault, it is the honest speed of the link.
If it does not work, the fault is nearly always audio level or PTT. Dire Wolf will tell you which. Send me a message once you are on and I will help — I am a beginner at this myself and would rather have your corrections than your patience.
| 144.850 MHz | Packet BBS 7Z1FP-8, through node 7Z1FP-7. 1200 baud AX.25. |
| 21.115 MHz | Packet BBS over HF, VARA, 0600-1400 UTC |
| 144.800 MHz | APRS 7Z1FP-10 |
| 145.000 MHz | Riyadh local FM |
| 14.290 MHz | HF, Arab Group net |
This is the first piece of something longer: a serious attempt at packet and digital infrastructure for amateurs across Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The region has very little of it. What exists elsewhere — linked nodes, store-and-forward mail that crosses borders without touching the internet, emergency traffic handling that survives when commercial networks fail — mostly has no counterpart here.
Building that takes years and many operators. It starts with one node staying reliably on the air, documented well enough that the next person can copy it.
| Main site | ge97.com — a working museum of the early internet, and where the archiving work lives |
| Gopher | gopher://hp84.com/ — 35,790 catalogued 1990s sites and a 9,070-site Arabic directory, served over the pre-web protocol. No modern browser speaks Gopher; use a client such as Lagrange, or Floodgap's proxy |
The instinct behind all three is the same: small, plain, fast, and still working long after it should have stopped.