[aprssig] Text Messaging Radios (a simple use)

[Bob Bruninga]

> If anyone gets this up and going, 
> I would love to see a youtube   
> video of it working and of the 
> equipment used.                    

Here is a very fundamental and simple application of this capability at a huge marathon for example.  We all know the congestion on the main voice net and how inefficient it is to pass traffic by first  having to get the attention of Net Control, be acknowledged, and then allowed to pass the traffic.

Imagine this scenario

1)  Every HT at the event is asked to pre-program these sequences into his DTMF autodial memory:  
999*ABC#EMR#
999*ABC#PRI#
999*ABC#RTN#

2) Net control has one of these FT51/TH78's in front of his operating position.  Where he is a busy person handling traffic...

3) Anyone in the field that has Any traffic for the net simply presses his appropriate DTMF memory button (on a separate dedicated FREQ) and instantly, his request, his CALL ID and his urgency of traffic are right there up-front in front of the net control.

4) Net control then knows who to call next.  Very efficient.  The ultimate in a DIRECTED net!

The 999 is the group call for this function.  The ABC is the users numeric suffix callsign ID (APR for example is 277) and the EMR, PRI and RTN are the 3 letter abbreviations for the urgency.

Some people would complain of the complexity, but then only because some hams refuse to ever do or learn anything new.  But you can see that the process is very simple and  most people can pick it up in an instant.  Of course the ideal radio for this application is a dual band.  Then you can send in yoour check-in-with-traffic without leaving the net freq.

Cross band is recommended so that the NET control can see the incoming traffic while he is transmitting on the voice net.

Practice at your club, and it could really work well.

Bob, Wb4APR