[aprssig] A few thoughts from the road

[Earl Needham]

On Jan 19, Tom Russo wrote:
>On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 12:53:33AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron 
>collision of the 
><<https://lists.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig>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.
><snip>

         I've been thinking about this situation for a while, and I think 
we have a major problem, but it isn't what most people think.

         The problem is: HOW DO WE HAVE THE SAME SOLUTION FOR ALL PARTS OF 
THE COUNTRY?

         And I don't think we CAN have the same setup all over.  Bob has 
noticed this, too, and spoken of it when he mentions leaving WIDEn-N in 
place in sparsely-populated areas.

         Now, the network here is a little odd.  I live near the end of a 
string of digis starting up in the mountains, and carrying along past 
GALPK, CAPTAN, FTSUMN, and MELROZ.  You can look these stations up on FINDU 
and see what I mean.

         A couple of days ago, MELROZ went down for a while.  MELROZ is the 
closest digi to me, and I can only hear one more, BLKWTR.  But BLKWTR is 
even farther down the line than MELROZ, so if MELROZ goes down, it's a 
major problem.  When MELROZ was down, I didn't even have enough stations on 
RF to get an ALOHA circle from UI-ALOHA.  Fortunately, I run an IGATE here, 
so there was still SOME activity...

         Is an IGATE the solution?  I mean, if people were running WIDE2-2 
so as not to clobber Albuquerque, then I wouldn't see anything at all 
without internet connectivity.

         Bob, what are your thoughts here?  (BTW, I'm still in DM84jk, 
about 200 miles ESE of Albuquerque...<G>)

         7 3
         Earl


Earl Needham, KD5XB, Clovis, New Mexico DM84jk
http://kd5xb-2.no-ip.info