Welcome to the latest edition of the National Packet Update, where we strive to collate updates on our endeavors to increase packet radio usage and expand its coverage in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and beyond.

I think its fair to say that packet has taken off and is seeing some exponential growth with almost 50 NoV'd packet nodes online.

In the North East of England, Robin M0JQQ has applied for an NoV for M0JQQ GB7CNR near Cramlington, and M0ODZ has applied for GB7ODZ in the nearby Houghton Le Spring. Hopefully once the two are operational they'll be able to link up and start exchanging packets.

In London, Syzmon M0GZP has been granted GB7WEM for his Node in Sudbury, and has reliable RF connectivity into GB7CIP in Caterham one of, if not the oldest packet node still operating.

2m: GBLCN, GB7NWL, GB7ODZ, GB7OUK, MB7NCD, MB7NER, MB7UWV 70cm: GB7OUK, MB7UAH

The software world has also been incredibly busy. Paula has released Xrouter v502x, available on the XRouter groups.io. It's currently for upgrading existing systems but she's currently working on a new installer and documentation for fresh installs. Hibby MM0RFN has also been putting in some hard work to build packages and host packet related software so it's as simple as `apt-get install`. For a list of instructions and available packages see this page

• Join the OARC Discord server (https://www.oarc.uk/join) and visit the #national-packet-project channel.
• Join the UK Packet Radio mailing list: https://groups.io/g/ukpacketradio/
• Visit https://packet.oarc.uk for further information, tutorials, and more. (Please note that this page is a work in progress, just like this project!)
• Build a node and get it on the air, or try connecting to any of the existing nodes.
• Stay tuned for future updates on the progress.