[aprssig] query: building a cheap but effective digi

[kc0atc at frii.com]

Hi, my name is Chris, callsign kc0atc.  I am located
in Estes Park, CO.

Recently the wide area digi that served our area (wa0bag)
was taken down.  The owner is moving out of state.

Our location is a high mountain valley, with the lower
parts of the front range to the east between here and
the larger towns, and Rocky Mtn National Park to the
west.  If you look at the findu map for kc0atc or
CW0078, you'll see that we are on the edge of APRS
no-man's land.

I'd like to put up a cheap digipeater at my house that would
serve some of this area and some of the eastern half
of RMNP.  I have experience with linux and soundmodem,
so that was my first choice.  But I've run into some questions.

Particularly, it seems to me that there are a lot of signals
that I can hear while listening to 144.390 but my digipeater
doesn't pick them up.  Is that a funtion of the way I have
the audio level tuned?  Or maybe the slow old PC I am using
doesn't do a good job filtering?

Another problem is that I don't have any nearby stations to
echo off of, so testing things has been hit and miss.

Finally,  I'm working with aprsdigi for digipeating, I have not
seen any treatment of the 'new' suggested operating procedures directed at
aprsdigi.  Maybe it should be obvious, but I'm new at this.
If someone out there could spare a few moments for a couple rounds of
email on that subject I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Chris