The Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a private foundation which makes annual grants and scholarships to projects that promote and support amateur radio and digital communications science. The funding for this comes from the sale of a block of of IP4 internet addresses in 2019 which were originally allocated to the amateur radio service way back in 1981. See https://www.ardc.net/about/faq/
As part of their year end 2024 report, they listed one grant of about €51,000 / £43,000 to fund the expansion of 'New Packet Radio capabilities in the UK and Ireland'.
This is the grant in more detail...
Grant: New Packet Radio Version 3.0 / Seeding UK and Ireland Usage
The Online Amateur Radio Community (OARC), predominately based in the UK and Ireland, comprises about 2000 members, with the core of this group having an interest in developing, innovating, and advancing digital communications via packet radio. One of OARC’s interests involves New Packet Radio (NPR), first emerging in 2019 and operating on 70cm, followed by the second generation (NPR-H), which was developed and deployed in 2021 by Steffen DO5DSH of Localino. Building on NPR-H, OARC seeks to develop an NPR with both upgraded 70cm capabilities and the ability operate on 2m and 23cm.
This grant will provide funding for OARC to collaborate with Localino to develop, create, and test the next version of New Packet Radio (NPR) software and hardware; implement it throughout Ireland and the UK; and make these resultant NPR devices available globally for use in both emergency communications and amateur data networks.
We are also using some of that money to pay professionals to provide a more consistent level of service to 44Net/AMPRNet users. Previously, this work had been done by volunteers.
Let's have a look at the details...
Q. Who are the Online Amateur Radio Community (OARC)? The OARC is an online group on the Discord platform and they describe themselves as "the largest online amateur radio club in the UK and Ireland."
To be honest, I never heard of this group prior to hearing about the grant. They would probably be better described as an online community with about 2000 'members' rather than a club. They would seem to be not much different than say many of the large amateur radio related groups on Facebook.
As for Ireland, their presence is tiny compared to the usual amateur radio club structure or groups.
Q. Who are Localino? Localino is a German company which sells 'New Packet Radio' products for the 70cms amateur radio band.
Q. What is 'New Packet Radio'? I guess the first thing to say is what old packet radio was or is. The traditional form of packet radio uses FM on the amateur radio 2m band (144 MHz) and the speeds are about 1200bps.
This reached its peak back in the 1990's before people had internet access at home and the packet radio network was used to access a local BBS, send messages across the network or to access the DX-cluster.
While the packet radio was based on the AX25 protocol and with limited speeds, 'New Packet Radio' is a completely different system and operates on 70cms. It offers speeds of between 100 Kbps and 500 Kbps which is a game changer from the old packet speeds.
The chart above shows the speed difference and frequencies between the traditional form of packet radio, 'New Packet Radio' and the Hamnet system which is used mainly in countries like Germany.
Links and more information... If you want more information on 'New Packet Radio' then I suggest you first look at the links and videos that I have included below.
1) In September of 2024, Dave MM0RFN gave a talk titled 'Building a Modern Packet Radio Network' at the EuroBSDCon in Dublin. He gives an overview of the current state of the packet network in the UK and touches on NPR as well.
2) In this video, Matt M0DQW looks at the NPR-70 modem on his popular Tech Minds Youtube channel.
In conclusion... The purpose of this post is to give anyone interested a selection of links and videos so that they can get a better idea of what 'New Packet Radio' is about.
It'll be interesting to see how this project develops and how many people decide to take it up. I have no doubt that sending some form of data over amateur radio will always be of interest to some people and it's not hard to see it being the only source of interest in amateur radio for a lot of newer entrants.
