There are as many ways to hear and decode packets as their are HF rigs on the market, so for this exercise we'll point you in a couple directions, with the last being what you'll likely want to do with your node that you set up following the FARPN guides.

To simply “hear” packets, you can tune your radio to one of the common packet frequencies (14.105 LSB or 7.104 LSB) make sure your rig is in the appropriate digital mode, and then wait till you hear something that sounds like this: https://www.sigidwiki.com/images/e/e0/PACKET_300.mp3

FARPN members have started compiling some basic settings for the rigs they use, so if you aren't hearing anything, a good place to start is our Packet Station Planning page.

If you haven't set up a node, but want to get on the air to hear and decode some packets, start with the information you can find here:

Direwolf and QTtcpTerm Tutorial.

This will involve some work, but will get you decoding packets, without the need to set up an entire packet node.

If you're here, it's likely because you set up a node using the FARPN guides, so it makes the most sense to use that to start decoding packets!

The simplest thing to do, is to head over to the guide on using QTtermTCP with your node, since you installed that as part of the tutorials, and watching the packets fly by in the monitor window!

a lot of what you'll see will be plain old words you can read, but there will also be a lot of text that is “codes” for various services, exchanges etc. part of the fun of this exercise is monitoring that traffic for a while, and figuring out what it all means.

One of the packet groups in the UK has some pretty useful information on what some of these codes that you'll see mean:

https://wiki.oarc.uk/_media/packet:bpqterminal_frames.pdf https://wiki.oarc.uk/_media/packet:decifering_packet_frame_headers.pdf