I (Chris, G6FCI) ran an Amateur Radio Packet Bulletin Board from about 1987 to 1996. It’s callsign was GB7FCI. With the birth of two sons, and other work/life changes, I found I had less time to run the BBS, and for amateur radio in general, so reluctantly I surrendered the callsign in early 1997.

Roll on nearly 30 years and I’ve retired and have more time available. I started to get back into amateur radio and wondered about the state of packet radio. It seems it’s still a thing, but very different to the 1980/1990’s. There was still a local BBS, GB7ESC run by Alan G0WDA, but with very few users. The radio-based forwarding links that existed way back have gone with much inter-BBS forwarding now taking place over the Internet (using AXIP).

I’ve been working with Alan on a number of projects and we’ve become good friends in a very short time. I soon ended up with my own mini-node and personal mail system. Then a few days ago Alan prompted “Why not get a Notice of Variation for your installation?” Back in the day this was a serious undertaking, requiring lots of forms to fill in and delays whilst seemingly everyone on the planet approved your application. It took months and I wasn’t keen on the idea of paper chasing for that long. Alan kept on saying “Try it, you’ll see it’s easy”. So I tried it, and saw how easy it was. Within an hour or so my application had been approved and I was once again the custodian of GB7FCI.