These pagers normally come with a (more or less) hard-coded RIC. It can be found on a small label on the back side. It is not! the „Skyper Nr.“ but the second part of the „ID Nr.“. It is contains 7 digits of which the last four are underlined (has been used as a PIN in the former life of those units).

These units support automatic time synchronisation to the DAPNET transmitter/core and rubric messages. The latter need an activation which can be sent out from the hampager portal (See „rubrics“). The rubrics abonnement is apparently lost if the battery dies.

The old German POCSAG network used 465.310MHz as broadcast frequency. Fortunately the units can be modified to work in UHF ham band range. In Germany there is a centrally coordinated frequency used for POCSAG broadcasting: 439.9875MHz. To make Skypers work on this QRG you need to change the crystal, remove a frontend filter and probably add two capacitors to the replaced crystal. After that it is necessary to re-align the RF components.

Although Skypers come with pre-programmed RIC these can be modified. You will need a hardware interface for RS-232 port and the corresponding (DOS) software.

You need an interface that supplies 3v0 to the pager to activate its programming mode. A small SMD PCB that fits into a DB9 connector case is described here: https://github.com/dk4pa/SKYPER_PROGRAMMER. Power is drawn from a USB port and converted to 3v0. A small amount of PCBs is available at cost from the authors. Please contact DK4PA or DF2ET. The Skyper has a programming interface which is located inside the battery compartment. It requires the wiring of GND, 3v0 as well as RX/TX lines. All experiments to build some sort of plug failed so far. Thus we normally solder the 4 wires to the pads after opening the case.

There is a DOS software that is able to read/program Skypers model 1 and 2. The software to use can be found on the internet from various Russian? sources. It refers to the pager as NEC21a which is probably some vode or development name for the units. You will need an (old) MS-DOS machine with a physical serial RS232 interface to run the application. Tests with VMs failed so far.

After starting the software you have to load a .ROM file before you can read the pager configuration. There a different ones corresponding to the Skyper versions 1 and 2. After you have successfully read the pager configuration you can identify its RIC (if the label is lost for example) or even change it to a different value. You will also find the RIC that is used for group calls and rubrics.