[aprssig] Question about paths

[n2lbt at spamcop.net]

John, I don't think William was responding to your question. The  
recommended path for mobiles is WIDE2-2 or WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 see

http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs/fix14439.html

Anything more than that and you risk having your packets dropped, or  
truncated. Communicating beyond 2 hops becomes geometrically  
difficult, and interferes with neighbor's networks. It's unfair, rude  
and not in the spirit of ham radio. If you really think you can  
communicate beyond 2 hops, you must fill in the individual  
digipeaters to make the path, but you will quickly find it just won't  
work reliably. Why you ask? Because the other stations in your home  
town are flooding the network with WIDE3-3 and higher for local  
comms. This is the way it works, it is a fixed amount of space for  
data. As you add more stations with longer paths, the distance you  
can reliably communicate goes down.

Again, you admit using WIDE3-3 for local communications, and claim it  
"works". Of course it does, but at what cost?

Do you run your HF station at 1500 watts for local nets? Think about  
it, or take the time to read about it.

--
Dennis Hudson, N2LBT
Sysop APRSALY
http://neaprs.no-ip.org:14501
http://www.neaprs.org
Albany, NY


On Jun 18, 2005, at 5:10 PM, n4qwf at ntelos.net wrote:



> Thanks for taking the time to repsond. As I understand it your  
> message is
> aimed at how I can get to the internet while I am at my home area. My
> concern is how do I get to my home area when I am away from home.  
> Such as
> I was this past week while on vacation in Nagshead,NC. I don't have  
> any
> problem here in Lynchburg,Va. with things working rather nicely using
> WA4BWB-3. I use a path of Wide 3-3. Most of the fellows here do the  
> same.
> I saw some of those on the screen of my D-700 while I was away but  
> none of
> them saw me back here. Something seems wrong with that. Seems I should
> have been the one using a path that would get me digi'ed and not  
> someone
> who is at home and does not need to be seen around the country. I  
> changed
> the path in my radio APRS setup to a number of different alias but  
> none
> seemed to work. I would hope at some point there would be  
> established a
> path setting that anyone could change there local setting to and get
> digi'ed back to were it matters. If concern over network congestion is
> going to prevent those that matter most from being seen then why  
> use it?
> Maybe that clarifies my question. Thanks for your attention and  
> 73's <<
> John
>
>