[aprssig] Weather Stations and Net Neutrality

[Joseph M. Durnal]

It isn't just kenwood, if I have the xastir setup in the car it can be
even worse, as nothing is displayed on my screen when positionless
weather is received.

If the station transmits its postion every 30 minutes, weather data,
every 5, for stations that are not in range for the position, but move
into the area just after, will receive 6 packets that aren't very
helpful.  If I was driving toward the rain storm, I would probably
have found it on my own by the time I learned where it was from APRS.
I don't know, to me, it seems like more wasted bandwidth than less,
but I guess it depends on your point of view.  Around here (Maryland)
there are plenty of fixed stations, but still many more mobiles, and a
lot of APRS mobiles passing through.

73 de Joseph Durnal NE3R



On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Steve Dimse <steve at dimse.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> aprssig mailing list
> aprssig at lists.tapr.org
> https://lists.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig
>