In part five of our packet radio series, we will see how to send messages to other users. Back in the 80's and 90's the Bulletin Board System (or BBS) was alive and well. It allowed users to send messages to each other - in the last part of the series, we did connect to a BBS and read bulletins that were available to everyone.
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| A bulleting being read from the BBS |
Now we will look at how the Club explored using the BBS for personal messaging.
We started by keeping things really simple! Firstly, we needed to set a few parameters up regarding the BBS that we wanted to use as our 'base', or in packet radio terms, our home BBS. This is done by using the HOMEBBS command, shortened to HOME.
However, we can also set our name and QTH, using the NAME (or N) and QTH (or Q) commands... but check the help file regarding the BBS that you are using, as they may not be the same.
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| Setting your name, QTH and home BBS |
We'll come back to the address used for setting the HomeBBS later and move on to sending one of the Club members a message to test the system and make sure it's working. We'll send something to G7BEH, but we need to know the address to send it to. That's where the Info - which is shortened to I - command is used (check the help file for correct syntax on your BBS). On GB7BWR, it's I <callsign>
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| Using the information command to find details on a user |
We can see that G7BEH has the same HomeBBS as the Club, so we can easily send them a message to let them know about the next Club meeting. To do this we use the SEND (or S) command... but be aware that there are options when using it! Using the help file, we found that we can send personal messages by using S or SP, bulletins by using SB. Ignore the ST, send national traffic messages for now!
S - Send Message - S or SP Send Personal, SB Send Bull, ST Send NTS,
SR Num - Send Reply, SC Num - Send Copy
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| Sending a personal message from the Club to G7BEH |
We used SP followed by the shortened version of the address (as G7BEH is on the same BBS as the Club). we then get to enter a title (or subject line) for the message and then the body of the message. On a new line, enter /ex to end the message and send it. You can see that it was given a message number of 5540.
With that done, it was time to disconnect and wait for a response from David. Here's what G7BEH sees when he logs on to the BBS and uses the List Mine (LM) command, sees that there is a message and Reads it (R 5540):
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| How G7BEH saw the message sent from the Club |
David then sends a reply using the Send Reply (SR) command; the system already knows who the message will be going to and the subject line, so David just needs to fill in the body text of his response.
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| G7BEH sends his response to our message |
When we (the Club) next log on to the BBS and run the LM command, we see that G7BEH has responded to our message and we can read it by running the R 5541 command...
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| The Club reads David's reply |
Once we've read the message, you should delete it so that it's no longer taking up space on the BBS. The KILL, or K, command is used for that
k 5541
Message #5541 Killed
In this part, the Club was able to set it's home BBS, send a message, receive a message and then delete. We also saw that Club member G7BEH, was able to send a direct response to our 'email'.
In the next part, we'll take a look at hierarchical addressing used in packet radio.
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