[aprssig] APRS New Initiative and the D710

[Bob Bruninga]

Saw a few Echolink and IRLP nodes on my D710 while driving through western and central NY, but no Voice Repeater objects.  Did find one other Voice Alert station as I got to Ithica.  It was classic!

About once every few minutes I began to hear pings as I got within about 5 miles.  Then got a call from Kevin on 144.39 Voice Alert and he moved me over to their 146.97 repeater for a long chat about APRS.  I updated them on the new Initiative to get Operating Frequency objects posted on APRS so that Travelers could find a QSO.  See:

http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/localinfo.html

Just look at the STATION list on the front panel of your D700 or D7 and these voice repeater FREQUENCY objects will show up and easily stand out against the list of callsigns.

The New D710 radio makes this even easier, as you can press the SORT-by-CALLSIGN button, and then the top five of these FREQUENCY OBJECTS are listed first so you have a selection of local frequencies to choose from.  Then pressing the front panel TUNE button, you can instantly QSY the D710 to the closest frequency.

You can also press the FILTER button to only list MOBILES, and then press SORT-by-RANGE and now the five closest mobiles are listed first.  A Great way to make contact, unless of course, they are deaf trackers or are not running Voice Alert, or are not indicating their listening frequency.

APRS is about RECEIVING mobile info of immediate VALUE to the mobile operator.  APRS is about facilitating human-to-human communications.  This new initiative (which was the orignal purpose of APRS in the first place) is to get people in contact via sharing of LOCAL relevant ham radio real-time information.  In my mind there is nothing more valuable to the traveler than these FREQUENCY objects, IRLP and EchoLink objects, and other local APRS packets such as NETS and MEETINGs, plus Voice Alert to get people informed and connected while traveling.

APRS is about RECEIVING local real time information... but for this to work, someone has to TRANSMIT it. So please review the above link, and make sure that EVERY APRS digipeater in your area is putting out its own VOICE REPEATER FREQUENCY object (direct only) to inform visitors how to communicate in the immediate area.  This is a NO-COST addition to APRS!

Remember to select a unique sequence of one to three letters to uniquely identify your local repeater object so that it can be found uniquely on FINDU.COM.  Selecting these letters/numbers is first come, first served, so if your letters are special, grab them now.  You can see what are already in use by wildcarding the frequency on FINDU.COM.  For example, here are the 146.94 repeaters so far:

http://map.findu.com/146.94*

Thanks
Bob, WB4APR