[aprssig] More on polling the d7/ d700

[Brian B. Riley]

Herb sent this to me privately and it got me to thinking so I conducted some
tests with my d7 and d700 and I am posting the reply back to the list

The D700 indeed will respond with a posit on receipt of the message to
itself with "?APRS?" Embedded in the text. It will do so regardless of the
status of the BCON . ON or OFF it will beacon in response. The only way it
won't is if the TNC is not enabled or it doesn't have a good posit.

This means that you could set the d700 to absolute minimum current demand,
light off, second channel off, digipeat only on an oddball call, read the
GPS and fix set the lat/long and turn off GPS and then
poll it occasionally to get a relative position to yourself. I think you
could easily halve or third the drain on the battery.

-- 
Cheers ... 73 de brian, n1bq, underhill center, vermont


On 1/12/05 12:09 AM, "Herb Gerhardt" <hgerhardt at wavecable.com> wrote:

> Brian,
> 
> Tell me more.
> 
> Are you saying you can leave the D700 turned on at say the trailhead with BCON
> turned off (not displayed), and then when you send the ?APRS? message, the
> radio will respond with its position.  So the rest of the time it sits idle
> until I query it.  Is that the way I understand it?
> 
> I normally leave my D700 in the truck on PM5 which is programmed to only
> activate the left channel which is on APRS with the display lighting turned
> off and no beeping or sounds.  It is also set up as a digipeater but will only
> respond to my suffix (UVC), so that it will not digipeat anyone except for me
> from my D7A.  That allows me to utilize the D700 as my private digipeater just
> in case I can not hit the system from my D7A from my location.
> 
> Obviously your message has my mind going on other possibilities.  Will have to
> play with this idea.  Any inputs from you would be appreciated on how else you
> utilize your radios.