[aprssig] New n-N Paradigm Bulletins

A.J. Farmer (AJ3U) ajfarmer at spenet.com
Tue Feb 15 11:10:05 EST 2005


Okay, here it is straight from the UI-View Documentation so we can put this
one to bed. ;-)  So, technically these are "announcements" according to the
APRS specs. ;-)

~~~
APRS supports both bulletins and announcements, to quote the draft APRS
protocol specification:-

General bulletins are messages where the addressee consists of the letters
BLN followed by a single-digit bulletin identifier, followed by 5 filler
spaces. General bulletins are generally transmitted a few times an hour for
a few hours, and typically contain time sensitive information (such as
weather status).

Announcements are similar to general bulletins, except that the letters BLN
are followed by a single upper-case letter announcement identifier.
Announcements are transmitted much less frequently than bulletins (but
perhaps for several days), and although possibly timely in nature they are
usually not time critical.

Sending a bulletin or announcement is exactly the same as sending a normal
message, but you address it to BLN1, BLN2, BLNA, BLNB, etc, and the APRS box
must be checked. If your message spreads over several lines, then UI-View32
will automatically increment the last letter/digit of the address.

Bulletins are transmitted when they are first written, then the transmission
period decays as follows (the values are minutes) 2, 5, 10, 20, and remains
at 20 until you delete the bulletin from your Sent message list.

Announcements are transmitted when they are first written, then the
transmission period decays as follows (the values are minutes) 2, 5, 10, 20,
30, 60, and remains at 60 until you delete the bulletin from your Sent
message list.

NOTE - that you have to delete bulletins and announcements from the list to
stop them being sent.

If you want to save bulletins and announcements that you send between
program sessions, so they carry on being transmitted when you restart
UI-View32, then you should check "Save Bulletins" on the message screen
"Options" menu.
~~~ 

73!

A.J. Farmer, AJ3U
http://www.aj3u.com


-----Original Message-----
From: aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org [mailto:aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org]
On Behalf Of Keith - VE7GDH
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 4:26 PM
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [aprssig] New n-N Paradigm Bulletins

Bob WB4APR wrote on Monday, February 14, 2005 12:46 PM PST

> Are you sure?
> This is good news.  I thought that UIview treated a bulletin
> like any other message and transmitted it at a fixed rate 
> only and then timed out...  If UIview has the decay
> algorithm on bulletins this is good news..  Bob

After AJ3U commented... 
> Sure, just send a message to BLNB
> It will repeat on a decaying schedule until you delete it.

I sent a reply to the SIG back on Dec 11 2004 after someone I said "UI-View
has significant flaws in its message system"...

<quote>
Significant flaws? Maybe it could be more flexible or decay in some way, but
I have UI-View set to retry messages every 60 seconds for 5 times, and to
"retry on heard" (if the other station re-appears) and to expire after 60
minutes. By "decay" I assume that you would rather it decayed something like
the way UI-View handles bulletins... send after 2, 5, and 10 minutes, and
then every 20 minutes until deleted, and the way it handles announcements...
send after 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, and 60 minutes and then every 60 minutes after
that until deleted.

UI-View can be set to send acks by the unproto path specified in the station
set-up, or it can be via an unproto path derived from intelligently
reversing the path by which the message was received.  I don't send a lot of
APRS messages, but have used them from time to time, and I never got the
impression that it was flawed in any way and I don't think I would describe
its way of messaging as being useless.
</quote>

73 es cul - Keith VE7GDH
--
"I may be lost, but I know exactly where I am!"



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