[aprssig] Airborne APRS

[A.J. Farmer (AJ3U)]

On 10/28/05, William McKeehan <mckeehan at mckeehan.homeip.net> wrote:
> Good point..but this balloon was sending packets at a high rate on a seperate
> frequency; it seemed to work much better than being on 144.39.

Well, pros and cons here.  If the use of APRS for recovery is one of
your primary goals, then I would put it on 144.39 so that the position
reports are picked up by IGates and passed to Findu.  If you can't
find the balloon, and if the landing causes it to stop transmitting,
you would at least then be able to follow the track on Findu as a last
resort and get an approximate location of the landing.  Leverage the
network that we have all created!  Sure it may be transmitting at a
higher rate than "standard" stations, but events like this is one of
the reasons why we all put this network together, right?!  Plus, I
think most people enjoy seeing balloons on APRS.  Seeing the same
mobiles and digi's on the map every day gets boring. ;-)

Otherwise, you are going to have to make sure you have a couple of
stations in place to receive the balloon's packets on your alternate
frequency.  I say go with 144.39.

--
A.J. Farmer, AJ3U
http://www.aj3u.com