[aprssig] Appalachian Trail APRS trip report

[Robert Bruninga]

Just got back from a 4 day 40 mile hike on the AT with
6 high school kids.  I carried APRS, HF, GPS, RINO's
a few HT's and several FRS radios for the kids.
Lessons relearned:
1) Never once took the HF out of the pack
2) Never once used GPS (we could see where we were
    on the maps...)
3) locating water, warmth, preparing food and
    placing one foot in front of the other is all that counts
4) RINO's were useless.  Lost contact at 1/3rd mile
    but didnt know it until we wasted  hours backtracking.
5) HAM radio on 52 always worked.
6) Cell phones didnt (though we were getting full
   scale signal readings (maybe we were hitting too
   many cells?
7) Parents were able to see our progress on FINDU
    just from my manuallly keyed in posits on my D7
    a few times  a day.  No GPS needed.

In otherwords, one D7 for me (with the thin battery)
and the little tiny Yeasu FT-2R for the two licensed kids 
would have been  sufficient.

Nothing new here.  Just an APRS trip report.
de Wb4APR, Bob