[aprssig] Status text & related frustrations

[Steve Noskowicz]

ARggggg!   Just an observation...P L E A S E done try to explain why it's this way.
  While I'm understanding more of the reasoning and background of some of the APRS parameters and practices... this is, unfortunately, I believe, one of the reasons APRS is not for the faint of heart and probably having difficulty picking up momentum.  Shoe-horning various things into other frame slots (I understand the benefit) and mixed terminology, such as:
 TO-CALL, UNPROTOCOL (D700).  
Then: UI, Unnumbered, Unproto

I know it is not intentional, but various explanations don't stick to a rigid terminology (or provide a magic decoder ring).  It may be the way we talk, but its darn near impossible to get the proper understanding when reading stuff on the web.   [ Not to pick intentional, but MANY pretty  good PowerPoints still have RLAY,WIDE in them.  Web pages REQUIRE upKeep - I know it's work.

AND, yea, I know, if I was an old Packet operator, this would all fall into place, but I'm not AND I don't believe I need to be.  I'm not an idiot, I'm just not familiar with the long standing, relaxed, way of talking.

Short form: We need the proverbial Cliff's Notes.  There's still a lot of tutorials out there with RELAY,WIDE in them!  hint, hint, wink, wink,  nudge, nudge.

Just the other day I, for the first time, had my D700 in Packet mode and I was just watching packets on a dumb terminal.  It looked like KA9LDD-2 has RELAY last... Yikes, check out his raw packets!  Either he's really confused or trying to be difficult. I sent him a note...we'll see.

-- 
73, Steve, K9DCI


--- On Sun, 7/20/08, Bob Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:

> From: Bob Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu>
> Subject: Re: [aprssig] Status text?
> To: "WD6EJO" <wd6ejo at arrl.net>, "Bob Bruninga WB4APR" <wb4apr at AMSAT.Org>
> Cc: aprssig at lists.tapr.org
> Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008, 6:39 PM
> > Should the status text be one of the canned 
> > Mic-E messages or is any suitable status 
> > message proper?
> 
> Good question.  When the Mic-E format came out, things got
> a little overlapped.  APRS was dsigned with two fixed
> packets per station, STATUS and POSITION (not counting
> messages)...  These packets were separate and distinct, and
> each station could only have one STATUS and ONE POSITION at
> a time.
> 
> STATUS gave each station something like 57 bytes of free
> text.
> POSITION allowed only something like 37 bytes of free text.
> 
> But then Mic-E came out and we wanted to combine everything
> into one packet.  Plus we had 3 extra bits.  So here is what
> we have in a Mic-E packet:
> 
> 1) Position
> 2) 3 comment bits (1-of-7 predefined words)
> 3) Freefield on the end...
> 
> Now what to call the free field on the end?  Since we
> already defined the 3 comment bits, then we decided to call
> the postion text in a Mic-E packet as STATUS.  
> 
> So in conclusion.  When we say STATUS packet we are taling
> aobut the independent long STATUS packet which is
> independent of position.  But when we talk Mic-E the word
> STATUS refers to the free field text that is added onto the
> Mic-E position.
> 
> In APRSdos, on receipt of a Mic-E packet, all of the
> information about the packet is parsed into the POSITION
> packet as in:
> 
> "D-700/M1/Off Duty/A=xxxxxx"
> 
> And the text is parsed and saved over in the STATUS field.
> 
> Hope that helps.
> Bob, Wb4APR
> 
> 
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