[aprssig] Compromise WinLink object proposal

[Steve Dimse]

On 2/15/05 at 12:04 PM Bill Vodall <wa7nwp at jnos.org> sent:

>Gating by explicit call won't work.  Too much trouble when stations
>are continuously coming and going.
>
I disagree. First, forget about "and going"...if a station goes, it stops
sending packets to the APRS IS, and therefore to the RF network, stations
leaving take care of themselves, they can be removed at any time, or never
removed without causing problems. To be clear, you don't need to edit them daily
when people turn their systems on and off, that is the whole point behind using
these beacons, when the node is on, its packets are on the APRS IS, and when the
station is off, no packets appear on the APRS IS.

Second, how many of these nodes are expected to be in the range of any given
IGate? With 500 registered in the country and fewer active, five or ten seems a
reasonable maximum number. Those 500 happened over a period of years, it isn't
like they add a hundred a day. So maybe an IGate operator would need to edit
their IGate call file two or three times a year on average, more in big cities,
less in small towns.

To me, that seems like a small price to pay to protect local RF users, and more
importantly to prevent the negative attitude that might prevent other amateur
systems from being accepted on the APRS stream in the future.

Steve K4HG