[aprssig] South/central virginia and Tennessee

[Stephen - K1LNX]

Bob,
     Your preaching to the choir. (warning: soapbox comments to follow)

I have tried unsuccesfully to get the digi owners/operators in upper
East TN/Southwest VA to follow the new N paradigm, and have tried to
understand the way they have it set up now. To my knowledge, we only
have 1 fully N compliant digi here (I can't speak for Knoxville, they
do seem to be more compliant then we are here however based on my
observations). I'm not sure what the problem is with getting them
changed, could be lack of manpower, equipment limitations, time, or
resistance to change.

Before I go off on too much of a tirade, there are a couple of
assumptions I have that I believe add to part of the problem here:

1. High level digipeaters (mountaintop) should not respond to Wide1-1,
that is what fill ins are for? We have several that respond to it....
2. Repeater objects. I plan on implementing this myself on a fill-in
digi, not the standard I know, but better than nothing. I am
considering a 2 hop path to blanket the area. I will be setting up a
simplex IRLP/Echolink node soon on 440 that I will be beaconing as
well. Ideally I think just one high level digi should implement this
for the repeater that is used most often in this area.

I've been using APRS for two years now and I still can not understand
my local network. My gripe is that their have been standards put into
place that have been suggested for use and they aren't. It makes it
difficult for end users such as myself to figure out the "best path"
to get a packet out.

</soapbox off>

How can I as a user make APRS better in my area? I encourage everyone
I know that uses APRS to run the suggested settings, but I still feel
like it's a constant uphill battle.....

73
Stephen
K1LNX

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 11:45 AM, Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:
>> Looks like a rogue mobile on RF...
>> It came through our area about 4 days ago....
>
> Stephen, ah, glad to find someone in the area.  I hope I can
> enlist you to incite some progress on the digipeatrs in the
> area.
>
> I was disappointed during my 300 mile drive along I-81
> surrounded by digipeaters on mountains on both sides for 5 hours
> not to ever see once, a recommended voice repeater object show
> up on my APRS radio.  I appologize if there was one and I missed
> it.  But the digipeaters in that area are missing a great
> opportunity to the amateur radio mobile public.
>
> Every APRS digipeater is responsible for 3 things:
> 1) Digipeating local actiivty
> 2) Announcing its New-N capabilities
> 3) Transmitting the locally recommended VOICE repeater FREQUENCY
> object for mobiles in its immediate footprint.
>
> Bottom line.  APRS is an INFO distribution system!  If a mobile
> is in range of ANY APRS digipeater, then his APRS system should
> show three things:
> 1) Packets from all local activity
> 2) Information on the digi's capabilities
> 3) The recommended Voice Frequency in that immediate area.
>
> I ask that all digipeater owners in the country get motivated to
> complete this third aspect of the New-N paradigm.  Please read
> all about it.  Just Google the words "APRS localinfo" without
> the quotes.
>
> I think Eastern Tenessee was also rather bleak and there is no
> New-N support through Knoxville I think.  Here are my recent
> tracks.  If anyone knows how to get a different scale eeastern
> USA map from FINDU, let me know.  All I can find is the USA map.
>
> http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/track.cgi?call=wb4apr-9&geo=usa.geo
> &start=1000
>
> On that link you can see the gaps around Knoxville and Eastern
> Ohio.  We need to educate the country that although RF APRS is a
> purely 100% local RF system, that it does have responsibility to
> transitent mobiles as part of a national system.
>
> Clubs (even without any APRS members) should be embarassed to
> have their area be a black hole to the motoring amateur radio
> public.
>
> Can we build up a map of black holes and appeal to the national
> ham radio community to fill them even if they don't use APRS?
> That is why I feel that integrating LOCAL voice freqeucny info
> on APRS is so important.  It makes the local ham (non-aprs)
> aware of APRS every time an APRS use comes up on a visiting
> repeater and says "I saw your repeater on APRS, thought I'd
> check in..."  That may be the first visiting mobile to check in
> to that repeater in a week!  So many of them have PL's that
> without this local info LIVE, it is hard to visit these days...
>
> Thanks, Bob, WB4APR
>
>
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-- 
Stephen Brown - ARS K1LNX
Johnson City, TN EM86uh
http://www.k1lnx.net