[aprssig] TEMPn-N and callsign digipeating

[Joel Maslak]

On May 29, 2006, at 12:14 PM, William McKeehan wrote:

> I'm struggling to find a solution.
>
> The only thought I have had thus far is to put up another WIDE area  
> digi that
> can be heard by the recently moved station.
>
> Anyone else have other suggestions?

I do a bit of hiking, and I would like to take an HT with me, along  
with APRS.  And I'd like to be able to both hear *and* be heard.

Certainly, I can park my car at the trailhead and set it up as a  
WIDEn-n digi, so I can not just be heard, but also hear.  However,  
that's a problem because of the QRM it's giving the "real" WIDEs,  
especially because my car probably doesn't hear nearly what the WIDE  
hears - but now will be repeating a significant amount of the WIDE's  
traffic.

One idea I toyed with was cross-band repeating on my D700, if it will  
also allow me to use APRS on it at the same time.  I'll have to look  
through the manuals and think about legalities a bit though.

I haven't tried this, but here's what I may try sometime:

BAND A set to an unused 70 cm digital frequency, in APRS mode, and  
set up to beacon position every X minutes (to identify the repeater  
on 70 cm).  Tone squelch is used with some random tone frequency.

BAND B set to 144.39, but NOT APRS mode.  No tone squelch is enabled.

The radio is also set in cross-band mode.

A 440 handheld (D7?) is used with APRS for the guy walking around.   
It's set up "as normal", except for transmit frequency.  It sends  
packets with the same tone as the base.

Basically, in this case, the D700 is an auxiliary station.  Stations  
sending packets through it will ID, with the Auxilary stations' call,  
to ensure that the 144.39 side is identified.  The D700 itself will  
identify on the 440 side, as you can't expect any other APRS station  
that's not part of your setup to identify your radio for you!

The only questions I'd have are (1) is this legal, (2) is the cross- 
band RX/TX switch time too long, and (3) can the D700 actually do  
cross-band and APRS at the same time?

The advantage of this method, for one user, is that he isn't clogging  
the main APRS frequency with "junk" traffic.