alt Hacker NewsI haven't done any AX.25 (or KISS) for over 30 years. Is it still a thing, or has the packet radio community moved on to something better? Back when I began, there were no turn-key solutions, so you often needed to modify your radio to get something on the air. This was especially true for 9600 baud FSK setups.
For a while, there was a community of stations creating an infrastructure similar to the dial-up BBS world, including message forwarding (UUCP).
There were even a few Internet gateways for a while. (I ran one of the two that were reachable from my corner of LA.) I imagine they're everywhere today.
(Getting married and raising children can quash a lot of hobbies.)
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I also wonder about the state of packet radio.
When I had time, I had no money for equipment. Now that I have money and knowledge, no time…
I am just getting into the packet scene in the Boston area.
APRS aside, as far as I've found, there are about a half dozen Winlink nodes in the area and one BBS. And one lovely node in Cambridge (KZ2X-1 [1]) which provides connectivity to a bevy of ancient (though virtualized) OSes.
I don't know how much AMPRnet activity there is. There are only 7 allocations in the area (mine included). I'd love to be able to e.g. log in to my home network from a few radio hops away but I don't think there's any infrastructure in place for that (such as Mobile IP).
[1] https://kz2x.radio/posts/complex/