On Thursday, October 23rd, the Wireless Society of Southern Maine’s Emergency Communications Team (ECT) arrived at the Cumberland County EMA to find the Internet down to the radio room. This also affected the EMA’s guest network.
This left the packet radio node, the repeater controller (impacting Wires-X), and the HF and VHF stations’ computers offline during the meeting and the Simulated Emergency Test.
The silver lining was that, despite the lack of Internet connectivity, the ECT was still able to carry out its duties, coordinating our dispatched teams using the UHF repeater in stand-alone mode, the DMR network where much of the network is connected by microwave, and FM simplex; and sending messages between teams and other agencies involved in the event leveraging the nearby KC1JMH packet radio node to send email over radio with Winlink and short sitrep messages with JS8CALL on HF.
The good news is that at about 11:30 on Tuesday, October 29th, Internet connectivity has been restored. If you have been trying to access the packet radio node over SSH, or tried dialing into a Wires-X room on the repeater, you should be able to do so again.
If you have trouble connecting to our resources, please check our status page at: https://status.mainepacketradio.org or this site for news updates on the network.
If you are a sysop of a public node that is connected to the Maine Packet Network, please share your node’s information and status updates with us so that we can share that information.
The 2025 Simulated Emergency Test (SET) is fast approaching, and we find ourselves planning out how to most effectively and efficiently deploy our Emergency Communications Team to designated shelters like area high schools, a local hospital, and so forth. Their mission: To supply ground truth observations and relay requests for equipment and support to the local Emergency Management Agency, where the information must be packaged neatly and relayed to MEMA, the National Weather Services, and other upstream agencies.
This year, we’ll be asked to share information with the other agencies using the SHARES program, which provides additional means of communication over HF radio frequencies, providing additional interoperability between agencies when standard methods of communications are not available. Follow the link for a more detailed description.
Requests for Information Strips
In our exercise, we’ll be given formatted queries and must answer them in a similar format called “RI strips” or Request for Information strips of text. Our deployed operators will receive an RI strip like this, which essentially asks us for check-in and our capabilities:
An example response from the field operator would look like this (example from this year’s document):
ROSTER/KB1TCE/STEVE/OWLS HEAD/KNOX/ME/44.048N/069.103W/19TDJ9172/Y/Y/Y)/NEED PRACTICE WITH HF NBEMS//
While they look difficult to understand, they allow us to pass a lot of information with the least amount of data over the slower speed digital modes that are more capable of getting the message through when conditions for radio communications are not favorable. The request and subsequent answers can easily vary, as needs change. All of the reports can then easily be opened in a spreadsheet program, delimited by the forward-shlash, to filter and highlight key pieces of information from the field.
The HTML Strip Format Tool
Thankfully, some tools have been developed to make these Requests for Information more operator-friendly. An HTML form has ben supplied to us, where you can paste the string of text you’ve received into a box, and it creates a regular form with fields to match their request. Simply fill in the blanks, like in the image above, and it’ll generate the strip of text that can be transmitted back over the radio with Winlink, JS8Call, or amateur radio. A copy of this HTML form can be found in the Forms folder of our Files page.
But… if you’re deployed directly to the field and haven’t already downloaded the file, how do you get this HTML file in the first place?
That’s where your packet radio BBS comes into play! This HTML strip tool form, and other handy standard message forms from the Virginia Digital Emergency Network (VDEN) have been uploaded to the WS1EC node. Since HTML files aren’t very readable on a terminal, and can take some time to download over a 1200 baud link, they’ve been zipped and should transfer in a minute or less.
The remote operator can connect right to the BBS at WS1EC-2, enter the FILES command to list the available files, and then YAPP FILENAME.ZIP to request the file be downloaded, if their terminal client supports it; e.g.: EasyTerm (Windows), QtTermTCP (Mac, Windows, Linux), and Packet Commander (iOS). At this time, the terminal in WoAD or Winlink on AnDroid doesn’t yet support YAPP.
Unzip the file, and open the HTML file in your favorite browser!
Paste and parse the strip, fill the form, and then copy the resulting answer strip into your favorite digital mode.
Packet Application
Low bandwidth? Don’t have Winlink or JS8Call available? No problem, there’s an app for that!
Connect your computer, smart phone or tablet to the WS1EC node with your favorite terminal application and launch the FORMS application. It will walk you through the request for information, prompting for each item, ask you for the call sign of the intended recipient, and then add the message to the mail pipeline!
Accessing the node
Method 1: Packet radio
Packet Radio users should dial into the NETROM address CCEMA, not the call sign and SSID of the station (WS1EC-15). This will present you with the full application menu.
Method 2: Internet
Internet users can connect via ssh packet@ws1ec.mainepacketradio.org -p 4722 (TCP port number 4722). This connects you to the telnet interface of the node over the more secure SSH protocol.
Some things to know:
User accounts need to be set up for telnet access before connecting, unlike RF.
This protects the node / host and the connected RF network from riff-raff on the Internet, and is built into the node software. We can’t change it.
Reach out to the sysop, Brad Brown, KC1JMH via email (see QRZ) or the Contact form in the menu to request an account. He will confirm a presence on QRZ and share a password.
The Internet needs to be online at the node’s location, check the status page to be sure.
Note that the backspace key doesn’t translate well over telnet. Hold control and press backspace to move the cursor back one position.
When connecting via telnet / SSH, you will not be presented with a menu. Press I to see node information and the menu.
Accessing the application
Once connected to the node, either by packet radio or telnet, enter the command FORMS and select option 10: Information Strip Response Form.
Paste in the information request string when prompted, and it’ll prompt you to answer each item in the inquiry.
You can review the results before submitting, if you don’t mind waiting for it to transmit, or enter N to tell it you’re ready to send the message.
Once the message is in the pipeline, it’ll ask you if you wish to send another, or exit the application. All of our forms will behave similarly, allowing you to fill the form and send it right to the intended recipient!
Retrieving the strip message
You or the receiving operator can enter the BBS and List or LA List All messages to view the recent submissions.
and then enter R # to read a message.
Host your own forms
Want to host your own FORMS application? The Python script and instructions can be found at this GitHub repository, under /apps: https://github.com/bradbrownjr/bpq-apps
Updates as of 10/29/2025
This article has been updated to include clarifications about Telnet user accounts under the section “Accessing The Node” that we’ve learned since the SET
We added a note with a link to our Status Page since the node had been disconnected from the Internet for several days right after we announced SSH / Telnet access, due to an Internet issue at its host location.
A copy of the HTML strip form has been uploaded to our Files section, since it doesn’t seem to be widely available. Thanks to KN0O for bringing that to our attention! If a source can be located, we will add it to our Links section so that operators can find the latest version.
Added a link to GitHub in case others wish to host their own copy of the FORMS application.
Congratulations to the Franklin County ARES for getting a packet radio and APRS node online this week! This new node is located in Farmington, ME, and is listening for local operators on 145.030 MHz as W1FCA-15, and on the national ARPS frequency 144.390 MHz as W1FCA-1. This node is connected to the Maine Emergency Packet Network UHF backbone, allowing traffic to travel the state and beyond!
Stay tuned for more announcements, there are things in development that we’re eager to share!
From Dan K1DQ on Saturday, July 22nd: The K1DQ Packet will be off the air for a few hours on Sat. afternoon so I can switch the antenna over to the other 2 meter radio for some FSQ field coverage testing by KC1RWI.
The Westbrook KC1JMH-15 node’s 2 meter VHF operator-access port was unavailable from February 20th until today, March 2nd. During which, the 70 cm UHF radio remained online and continued passing traffic along the statewide backbone between our other nodes.
We want to thank Richard Bates WD1O for going on-site and replacing a faulty component.
We added the following links to our Links section. Visit this section for official sources of information, guides and cheat sheets assembled by other organizations.
With this information, we’re hoping to permit the routing of messages sent to ZIPCODE@NTSME to automatically route to our Region 1 NTS traffic coordinator, Steve Hansen KB1TCE.
