[aprssig] SCR and APRS contacts

[Robert Bruninga]

For School Club Roundup (SCR), do not overlook APRS as another
way to make RF contacts.  With just a laptop and packet TNC, or
an APRS HT, or mobile APRS radio, you should be able to make
keyboard contact with other SCR's anywhere in the world as
follows:

For SCR, AE5PL has enabled a global APRS CQ function called
CQSRVR that will allow any APRS station out in the field, to
call CQ to all other similar stations all over the world.

APRS is a two-way tactical real-time communications system.  It
is an excellent demo that can be interesting to scouts or
students while they are waiting their turn to operate one of the
regular HF stations.  This is especially true as students see
other stations show up on the maps.

This CQSRVR is just a message address which will receive login
messages from other SCR field stations and turn around and echo
back out those CQ's to all other similar SCR stations.  When
each SCR station receives one of these, and now knows the
callsign of another SCR APRS station, then they can do the
normal APRS messaging between individual stations anwhere on the
globe.

See the web page:
http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/aprsjota.html

It is operational now so you can practice.  Just send an APRS
message to CQSRVR and include two copies of the keywords CQ SCR
as the first text at the start of your message.  An example
might be to send this message to CQSRVR:

CQ SCR CQ SCR from Naval Academy Annapolis, Maryland.

Its best to duplicate the "CQ SCR " twice because the CQ SERVER
strips the first one off, and also only a space delimiter is
allowed after the first CQ SCR.  By duplicating the "CQ SCR "
you don't have to remember to use a space instead of any other
delimiter and also one of the CQ SCR's still gets through to all
recepients so that they will know how and why they got the
message.

Hopefully, all other APRS SCR stations will see your message and
will respond to your actual call to complete the contact.

Good luck!
Bob, Wb4APR