[aprssig] Question abt recommended path

[Matt Werner]

I've seen this brought up before this, and again now...

On 5/4/05, Stephen H. Smith <wa8lmf2 at aol.com> wrote:

> [ The destination address is a quasi-callsign that normally begins with AP
> and can have up to 4 other characters after AP.   Normally, a three or four
> letter code indicating the program & version, or particular model hardware
> is appended to AP.  Your Kenwood should be sending something like "APK001"
> as the "UNPROTO Address".  If this destination doesn't begin with AP, most
> APRS programs and APRS digipeaters will ignore the packet.  This convention
> was established in the early days of APRS when it was often operated on
> channels shared with traditional connected packet. The APxxxx "destination"
> provided an easy way to ignore other packet activity on the channel.  ]

Any digi that digipeats strictly based on a packet that begins with
"AP" is broken.  Page 13 of the APRS Spec 1.0.1 lays out clearly what
the destination can be.  It gives us the following destinations as
valid:

AIR* ALL* AP* BEACON CQ* GPS* DF*
DGPS* DRILL* DX* ID* JAVA* MAIL* MICE*
QST* QTH* RTCM* SKY* SPACE* SPC* SYM*
TEL* TEST* TLM* WX* ZIP*

AP* is only one of 26 different VALID destination addresses.  Many of
these (AP, BEACON, CQ, GPS, DX, ID, etc) are used daily in APRS, not
just AP.

73 - Matt
KB0KQA