[aprssig] Weather Stations and Net Neutrality

[Steve Dimse]

On Aug 14, 2008, at 11:17 AM, Joseph M. Durnal wrote:

> The positionless weather is a bit frustrating for mobile displays.
> What good is the weather informaiton if you don't know if its 10 miles
> away or 100?  When I'm near home I know where the nearby weather
> stations are transmitting from, but when I'm traveling, unless the
> station transmits its position, the packet isn't very helpful.

This packet was created to address exactly the issue of this thread.  
Location for a home station is a static piece of information, and can  
be transmitted at a slow interval, preserving bandwidth. Weather is  
dynamic data, and warrants a faster transmission rate. If you don't  
split them, you either need to send the weather data less often than  
you'd like or the position data more often.

Every computer client is able to associate two different packet types  
together. So why don't the Kenwood radios do that? They could, they  
already have a forty station buffer, when a positionless weather  
packet comes in it could check that buffer and copy the position into  
the new weather record. From a programming standpoint, it is easy.

Why doesn't Kenwood do it? Well, you'd have to ask Bob. He is the  
interface between Kenwood and APRS. My guess it has something to do  
with his statement "It drives me nuts".
>
>
> Joe
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Bob Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu>  
> wrote:
>>
>> And this positionless Weather is the most frustrating kluge on APRS  
>> since it was first proposed in 1995!  It drives me nuts!  It  
>> violates the fundamental principles of APRS that each packet is  
>> self-contained and does not depend on aprior info to make sense.

Bob, who created the telemetry coefficient format? You, I think. That  
certainly depends on prior packets. What good is a message "can you  
meet me here?" if it does not contain a position? You don't send  
position in messages though. You need the computer to buffer the  
position info, so when you need it, it is there.

You don't like positionless weather. Whether intentional or not, I  
believe your attitude is the reason Kenwood never implemented the  
simple code change to associate the already buffered position with  
weather data. So, you don't like something, don't implement it in a  
popular part of the APRS network, and then say "See, I told you so"  
when it doesn't work as it should.

Sounds like something I'd do! ;-)

Steve K4HG