[aprssig] APRS New Initiative and the D710

[Rusty Hemenway]

Hi Bob	

Hope the D710 hits the stores this month.  Early in Sep I'll be driving from
LA to Rockville md via route 40 and then back across country from the New
England area, going route 90 to the Seattle area and then back to LA.  Sure
would like the new toy to play with!

73
Rusty K1GGS

-----Original Message-----
From: aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org [mailto:aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org]
On Behalf Of Bob Bruninga 
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2007 5:46 AM
To: aprssig at lists.tapr.org
Subject: [aprssig] APRS New Initiative and the D710

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

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