User:Tadd
Tadd, KA2DEW Raleigh NC.
I've been a ham since 1979, the year after I graduated High School. I've been putting ham radio relay systems (repeaters, digipeaters etc) on the air since 1982, and co-founded the North East Digital Association in 1989. I've been writing firmware professionally since 1982.
I lived in NNJ, OK, STX, NOLA, NNJ, Libya, NNJ, Houston, NNJ, Edmonton, NNJ,
Graduated High School 1978
NNY, ENY, NNJ, EPA, SNH, NNY, Seattle, NNJ
and now we're up to 1994 when I met and married Nancy, soon to be KB2TNR.
- 1994-1997 Mahopac NY,
- 1997-2002 Amherst NH,
- 2002-2007 Orlando FL metro area - east end of Orange County
- 2007- Raleigh NC.
That brings us up to today (11-2022).
My two kids are both away, Laura to NNJ where she does land survey documentation including CAD, and Jack who is in the USARMY, Staff Sergeant/82nd Airborne Infantry Mortorman, as I write this.
NEDA, North East Digital Association, spearheaded (as in poke with a spear) into existence a large packet radio network designed using dedicated point-to-point link backbones, on VHF and UHF, from Erie PA to southern Maine and included pseudopods in Ontario, Quebec, PA, NJ, CT, VT, NH, and all over NY and MA. It had thousands of users and hundreds of packet nodes based on TheNET firmware running in Z80 TNCs. We got it to its largest size without the benefit of the Internet. The Internet led to its downfall. The network and the club grew like crazy in 1989 through 1993 and started fading as Cable TV Internet modems started rolling out. We gave up the club in 2000 due to the fragmentation of the RF network, and a lack of imagination. We left behind a hundred excellent editions of various magazines produced by NEDA.
I moved from New Hampshire to Florida, working for Adaptec on RAID storage controllers.
Then I was hired by a North Carolina company to design packet networks to go in hospitals to connect and track portable equipment equipped with inexpensive battery-powered packet stations, and using very inexpensive AC-powered base stations. The packet communications were on the 900 Mhz band and using single-chip radios at 20mW and under power levels. In one hospital there were on the order of 3000 packet stations on the air and working for years. We were in a dozen hospitals when we were bought out and closed in favor of a competitor. Doh. I worked for RadarFind which became Teletracking full time from 2006 to 2014 and part time for a couple of years beforehand.
Starting in 2014 I worked for Clairvoyant Networks which had me working on a series of packet radio systems. I'm still there so not talking too much about the work.
In 2013 I started working with several people in NC on a new packet network based on off-the-shelf TNC, Raspberry PI and VHF+UHF radio equipment. That project begat TARPN.
