[aprssig] Status text?

[Bob Bruninga]

Your STATUS can contain anything you want.  It is free-field.  It is your brag text.  What you are doing.. what you want others to see about you.  examples.

"enroute grammas house"
"Commuting, contact me at wb4apr at arrl.net
"enroute Dayton!
"Bob's QTH, Satellite gnd stn, And solar power to go...

There is no need for the 7 pre-canned Mic-E status words if you are not running Mic-E.  Those were just a way of using 3 available bits in the Mic-E format and making the packet shorter if those pre-defined words were applicable in a particular case.  

The full status packet is much more flexible and can spell out anything you want the world to see up to I think somthing like 57 bytes, though reemmber that the mobile APRS radios do have limitations. SUch as:

D7 only displays 1st 20 bytes
D700 only displays 1st 28 bytes
D710 only displays 1st 37 bytes ? (I dont remember)

So always put the most imporatant info in the 1st 20 bytes and less and less important stuff on the end.  Write like a newspaper journalist.

Bob, WB4aPR