[aprssig] New Mexico and Arizona... New n-N Paradigm

[J. Gary Bender, WS5N]

Tom has a point with overlapping digi coverage around Albuquerque.  When driving 
around the local area I run 5 watts, simple whip antenna, and RELAY,WIDE.  I 
often see 5 or 6 repeats of "My Position".  This is mostly up in the mountains, 
however, which complicates coverage patterns.

I also spend a lot of time at my cabin in western NM, near Fence Lake, about 30 
miles east of the AZ state line.  I have found that RELAY,WIDE2-2 consistently 
gets me to an IGate on the drive and at the cabin.  Out that way I kick the 
power up to 50 watts in the mobile.  I want non-ham friends to see me on 
map.findu.com, so hitting an IGate is my primary design parameter.

BTW, a way to test for how much "n-N" you need from a location to reach an IGate 
is to send yourself a couple email messages.  Watch for a "My Message" echo so 
you know a digi saw you, and then wait for an ACK.  Do that a couple times at 
different path settings.  No ACK indicates you may need to increase the "N".

--
J. Gary Bender, WS5N
Tijeras, New Mexico USA


On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:27:15 -0500, Robert Bruninga wrote:
> For NM (and AZ I think) which has most of their populations near the
> center of the state, I think the best fix wouild be:
> 
> 1) Make UITRACE in all digis support NMn-N.  This will instantly stop
> all WIDEn-N QRM
> 
> 2) Put WIDE2-2 and WIDE3-3 in the UIDIGI list.  This will continue to
> support mobiles driving through with those courteous paths.
> 
> 3) They may leave UIFLOOD WIDEn-N in the extreme border digis
> (wilderness) since it wont hurt them in Albuquerque But These digis will
> still have NMn-N too in the UITRACE parameter.
> 
> THey can do this overnight.  Done.
> 
> 
> THis lets the WIDEn-N fly around the wilderness edges of the state, but
> dones not focus it all inward which is what is happening now...
> 
> de WB4APR, Bob
> .
> 
> 
> Easiest fix it sounds like in NM is to turn all the digis into NMn-N new
> mexico digis.  This will work wonderfully in states like Arizona and NM
> where most of the central population is central to the state.
> 
> Or if NM or Arizona wants to continue to support WIDEn-N, then simply
> trap-out WIDE4-4, WIDE5-5 and WIDE6-6 by putting those in the UIDIGI so
> that they get stopped at the border.
> 
> Actually, I think that is how I woiuld do it.  Keep WIDEn-N in those
> states, but get EVERY DIGI in ALL states to start traping out WIDE5-5, 6-
> 6
> 
>>>> Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org> 1/19/05 3:49:07 AM >>>
>>>> 
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 12:53:33AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron
> collision of the <needhame1 at plateautel.net> flavor, containing:
> 
>> 
>> Hey, I'm in Clovis, New Mexico -- that's about 200 miles east of
>> 
> 
>> Albuquerque and only 100 miles northwest of Lubbock, Texas, in
>> 
> DM84jk.
> 
> 
> I live near Escabosa, NM, about 20 mi. SE of Albuquerque, in DM64ux. My
> APRS
> experience here near town is very different from what you're
> experiencing out near Clovis.
> 
> At least in my view from near Albuquerque, the WIDEN-n situation is a
> mess.
> 
>> I just got home from a week on the road.  Had a lot of time to
>> 
> think
>> about things and listen to the actual audio on 144.39 around the
>> 
> country.
>> It was pretty busy in Salt Lake city, not quite so busy near
>> 
> Albuquerque,
> 
> 
> Egad.  If the racket I hear near Albuquerque when *I* turn up the volume
> on
> the data channel is "not quite so busy" then I don't wanna know what
> busy is.
> I hear almost continuous traffic with obvious signs of overlapping wide
> 
> 
> digipeaters stepping all over each other.  As I watch the panel of my
> D700 when
> in town, the packets are getting clobbered so badly that only a very
> small
> fraction are decoded.  At one point I wondered if it was just message
> traffic
> the D700 wasn't displaying, but that hope was quashed when I actually
> watched
> the packet monitor.  It's just undecodable cacophony.
> 
> 
> Of the nearly 150 stations I've got showing up on my home (RF-only)
> station,
> 81 are digipeaters, most of them WIDEN-n digis, and a large fraction of
> those
> are in states.  I'm seeing digipeaters from as far away as 500 miles,
> most of
> those using WIDE5-5 or WIDE7-7 paths.  Looking at some of the paths,
> they're
> getting from the NM border to Albuquerque in about 3 hops (in fact, the
> 
> 
> farthest station is down near Del Rio, TX --- it took 4 hops to get to
> the
> first New Mexico digi near Capitan, and two hops from there to get to
> me).
> 
> All of that is brought to me courtesy of the three WIDEN-n digis that
> constitute the only stations I can hear directly from the home station.
> 
> When I have to mess around with low-power trackers just about anywhere in
> central NM reliability is marginal or nonexistent, largely because it is
> difficult for the trackers to get a word in edgewise to the digipeaters -
> --
> they can't hear the traffic and think the channel's clear, but the digi
> can't
> hear them because it's too busy listening to 4 other digis non-stop,
> passing
> WIDE7-7 packets from digipeaters in central Texas to the ether near
> central Arizona.
> 
> Something that needs fixed here in NM, at least in central NM.  I'm not
> quite
> sure what it is or how dramatically things need changed, but something's
> gotta
> get tweaked to get the APRS network cleaned up here.