Extract the packet tag
From RFC 4880 [1]:
The first octet of the packet header is called the "Packet Tag". It
determines the format of the header and denotes the packet contents.
The remainder of the packet header is the length of the packet.
Note that the most significant bit is the leftmost bit, called bit
7. A mask for this bit is 0x80 in hexadecimal.
+---------------+
PTag |7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0|
+---------------+
Bit 7 -- Always one
Bit 6 -- New packet format if set
PGP 2.6.x only uses old format packets. Thus, software that
interoperates with those versions of PGP must only use old format
packets. If interoperability is not an issue, the new packet format
is RECOMMENDED. Note that old format packets have four bits of
packet tags, and new format packets have six; some features cannot
be used and still be backward-compatible.
Also note that packets with a tag greater than or equal to 16 MUST
use new format packets. The old format packets can only express
tags less than or equal to 15.
Old format packets contain:
Bits 5-2 -- packet tag
Bits 1-0 -- length-type
New format packets contain:
Bits 5-0 -- packet tag
[1]: http://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc4880#section-4.2