When packet radio was a new Amateur Radio pursuit, packeteers would attempt to see how far they could digipeat using the maximum eight digipeater call signs that you could program into a TNC.

Those were the days when you could count the packet users in Connecticut on one hand -- it was about the same in other localities, too --so multiple digipeater-hopping was no cause for concern. As I recall, the farthest I ever digipeated was about five digipeaters into Canada.

However, as packet radio matured and its users became more numerous, digi hopping began to be frowned upon because the sport interfered with real packet communications. And so it went.

Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, is bringing back the sport with his Appalachian Trail Golden Packet Event. He hopes to field enough Amateur Radio emergency communications teams located on mountain peaks in the Eastern USA to communicate packets and APRS messages from one end of the 2175 mile Appalachian Trail to the other end on Sunday, July 26. The RF path, of course, is line of sight and only about 1200 miles, so Bob hopes to accomplish the feat with 15 stations over 14 hops on a special 2 meter frequency that will not interfere with normal packet communications.

All the details concerning the event are on the Appalachian Trail Golden Packet Annual Event Web page. If you would like to participate in this event, you can contact Bob directly by e-mail or contact the team leaders for each of the participating mountaintop stations listed on the event's Web page.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: To communicate with Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, save a tree and send him e-mail instead or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.

Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor