[aprssig] More digis are changing to the new paradigm
Earl Needham
needhame1 at plateautel.net
Tue Jul 5 00:30:16 EDT 2005
At 10:14 PM 7/4/2005, Keith - VE7GDH wrote:
>Earl KD5XB wrote on July 04, 2005
><snip>
> > I'm not sure I like this -- for YEARS I have been out on the end of a long
> > string of digis, and I don't see much unless people use longer paths. It's
> > very frustrating that so many people want to "jump on the bandwagon"
> > EVERYWHERE and fix problems that only exist in the big cities. I'm
> > seriously considering moving all my APRS equipment over to PropNet
> > instead. I mean, if I only see 13 stations, then what's the point?
>
>This isn't meant as a criticism, but why are you "in APRS"? Usually,
>someone participates in a hobby or a particular aspect of a hobby because
>they think that it is either fun, interesting, a learning experience, or
>in some way useful to themselves or to others or to their community. What
>is APRS to you, and what your expectations of it?
Good question. The first time I saw APRS, it was from the QRZ
CD-ROM that included a callsign database and a TON of shareware. APRSdos
was on there, I think it was version 7.2? Maybe 2.7? Can't remember, but
it was a long time ago. The first time I tried it out, I just knew I had
to use this mode. I have had a lot of enjoyment from it, I guess because
it's similar to RADAR or something.
>Trying to look at it from your perspective, if I were the only station on
>the map and didn't see any other activity around me, maybe I would have
>trouble seeing the point of "why do it"? However, there is activity around
>you. Although there will always people that won't get involved in anything
>related to ham radio unless it is done solely via RF, I honestly think
>that the APRS-IS is an integral part of APRS now.
That may be true, but I'm not sure I want that to be MY way of
using it.
> I see that you are running UI-View32 at KD5XB-2 and something else at
> KD5XB-9 (TNC? and quite some distance away in TX).
Yeah, that's my dumb tracker that was set up in my truck. The
truck broke down and even though I brought the equipment home with me, I
didn't install it in the loaner truck I'm in. Hopefully I'll be back in my
own truck in a few days.
And I'll be replacing the dumb tracker with a HamHUD soon.
> If you have an Internet connection, you could connect your UI-View32
> station to an APRS server and "see" stations from as far away as you
> wanted to. While there will always be exceptions to the "WIDE2-2" rule,
> you have to agree that if there is any amount of traffic at all on RF,
> the longer the path, there more chance of collisions and the more chances
> there are of being clobbered or clobbering someone else. I just don't see
> rating the success or usefulness of APRS based solely on seeing "more
> stations on the map, but only if heard via RF" - if that is what you are
> saying. I also think that the closer we get to having (almost) everyone
> adopt a two-hop path, the better off we will be until such time as NSR
> (no source routing) becomes a reality, or perhaps a combination of NSR
> most of the time but special paths if needed.
I don't agree, there has to be some flexibility to cover various
situations. In some places I frequent, 2 hops will get you to 2 digis, but
no human operators and no IGATEs. On the other hand, some other places I
frequent are so saturated that 2 hops is just way too much.
>I'm not trying to talk you into quitting APRS and I wouldn't try to
>persuade you to stick around against your will if you decide to spend your
>time on other aspects of the hobby. I just don't quite see eye to eye with
>"what's the point" if you only see 13 stations on the map.
Well -- have you ever sat around and watched paint as it dries? <G>
Earl
Earl Needham, KD5XB, Clovis, New Mexico DM84jk
http://kd5xb-2.no-ip.info
More information about the aprssig
mailing list