[aprssig] Re: New and playing

KC2MMi kc2mmi at verizon.net
Thu Nov 18 14:23:24 EST 2004


<<The length of the trips is generally longer than the tracklog
in my GPS unit would hold, so I need an alternative storage location.>>

William, I think you're overthinking this. How long are the trips? How big
is the GPS trip log?
Most run at least 500 log entries, many are larger. 500 entries spaced five
minutes apart is 2500 minutes, 41 hours. Spaced two minutes apart, still 16
hours. Surely, you don't need to mark more often than every two minutes, and
surely, you don't drive for more than 16 hours straight?

So, you take a palm, or a laptop, and at the end of every day you dump the
GPS log to it. That can be saved, imported to mapping programs, plotted,
whatever. But taking a log dump is a routine GPS activity--and it allows you
to keep the laptop towed, off, safe. Ditto traveling with Palm, you keep it
off, stowed, safe, and just take it out to dump the log into it once a day.
Twice if you must.<G>

But that's nothing to do with APRS. APRS is for live reporting, and in that
case you don't need to store tracks--you need a whopping huge antenna and
more power to reach the digis.





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