[aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight

[Dave Baxter]

I like that idea!

Not sure how easy/dificult the pager conversion is, but over hear, I
think they use RF arround 175MHz, so not too far from 2m.   Can they be
made to monitor more than one frequency?  Like, scan for a signal?

Finding a suitable frequency to use could be "interesting", we only have
2MHz to play with, and most of that is band-planed, what isn't has all
sorts of "little private nets on", but only when you want to experiment
do they come out of the noise and complain..  Nothing new there then by
the sound of it!

There are also "still some issues" putting up new stuff on 70cms these
days.

Cheers.

Dave G0WBX.
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Jackson [mailto:bbj at innismir.net] 
> Sent: 26 January 2009 13:48
> To: bruninga at usna.edu; aprssig at tapr.org; bruninga at usna.edu; 
> TAPR APRS Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight
> 
> 
> On 1/24/2009, "Robert Bruninga" <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:
> 
> >What we really need is someone to take on the simple task of a PIC 
> >converter to convert APRS messages to DTMF PAGING text 
> messages so that 
> >those dozens of THOUSANDS of existing amateur radio DTMF paging HT's 
> >can be used to receive and send APRS messages.
> 
> Bob, while the number of FT-51s and TH-78s might outnumber 
> THD7s, I think the question that needs to be asked is are the 
> owners interested in such a service? Instead of focusing on 
> older HTs that people may or may not have. Has anyone ever 
> looked at a APRS -> POCSAG[1] Gateway?
> 
> Older, working pagers are a dime a dozen on the used market 
> and there are some people who have refitted them to work on 
> Amateur bands[2]. With the fact that there (quite literally) 
> buckets full of working pagers at HamFests, why not have a 
> "messagegate" that takes APRS messages to stations and 
> translates them to a message destined for a POCSAG compatible 
> pager. There were certain KAM TNCs that could encode POCSAG natively
> 
> Comments? Laughter? Rotten tomatoes? :)
> 
> ~Ben
> 
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POCSAG
> [2] http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/pager/plan.html
> 
> 
>