[aprssig] West Virginia Digipeater Coverage (US-19 and Interstate 79)

[Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr)]

Greetings Josh,

First, it would help if you specified actual tracking callsign 
(including SSID) and date/time range that you were traveling.  It would 
save us guessing that it was actually KD8HRX-2 that was mobile.  You can 
see your APRS activity including what Digi/Igates you were using at:

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/KD8HRX-2/*

(Larger final dash number are higher resolution, zoom in for details.  
The ...D-nn focuses on source locations and doesn't show all 
Digi/Igates).  (Note that some files are HUGE (final column is file 
size) and my bandwidth is limited.  Check the lower zoom levels first 
before pulling the higher resolution plots).

Are you questioning coverage on the 9th:

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/KD8HRX-2/KD8HRX-2-2009-07-09T00.00-2009-07-09T24.00-D-10.png

or the 12th?

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/KD8HRX-2/KD8HRX-2-2009-07-12T00.00-2009-07-12T24.00-D-12.png

It looks like you did some traveling on the 9th with some gaps in either 
beaconing or coverage.  On the 10th, it appears that coverage was good.  
You didn't move on the 11th (according to APRS anyway).  On the 12th, it 
looks like you covered some ground but didn't get many hits in the 
middle.  You didn't go very far today, July 13,

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/KD8HRX-2/KD8HRX-2-2009-07-13T00.00-2009-07-13T24.00-D-18.png)

but your packets sure put on some miles!

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/KD8HRX-2/KD8HRX-2-2009-07-13T00.00-2009-07-13T24.00-7.png

If you (or anyone else) are/is interested in APRS activity around the 
country, you can see daily plots of various regions at:

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/act24/*

In your case, the the NE plots for the 10, 11, and 12 would cover you.  
I'll leave it to you to figure out exactly where you need to look, but 
here's the key to the file names (most recent at the bottom).

USA-NE/NW/SE/SW are respective quadrants of the continental US.
FLORIDA is obvious, PALMBAY is my local area.

(0) is all APRS traffic, mobiles, Digis, and IGates
(1) is only direct IGate traffic (not provided for all ares)
(2) is Digi/Igate traffic only, no originating stations
(3) is Mobile/Digi/IGate positions, but no connecting lines
(Small squares are mobiles, small circles are Digi, larger circles are 
IGates)
(4) is (3) with smaller green dots for Digi/Igates
(Small red squares are mobile, small green are Digi, larger green are 
IGates)

The final dash number is a zoom factor compliments of 
http://OpenStreetMap.org.

If you look at enough of these graphs, you'll begin to see where 
coverage exists and where it is lacking.  Remember, these are for 24 
hours as indicated in their file name (Eastern Time).  If you want to 
see a composite of the entire USA over the past 2 weeks, check out the 
following URL.  I don't do the regions due to compute requirements.  
However, you can zoom in on the resulting picture and scroll around.  
The detail isn't half bad.

http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net.nyud.net/Tracking/act00/*USA*

Feel free to use these images however you wish, but republish the IMAGE, 
not the LINK!  My outbound bandwidth can handle a few interested people 
browsing, but I'd rather not be SlashDotted 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect).

If you would like to see a 2 week view of some certain area, drop me the 
N, E, S, W bounding rectangle coordinates along with an identifying area 
name and I'll see if I can generate detailed plots for that region.  My 
database is limited to North America only, though!

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - APRS Infrastructure Visualization


Josh Smith wrote:
> Everyone,
> Over the weekend I was traveling north from Beckley, WV to Morgantown,
> WV on US route 19 and interstate 79 and was fairly amazed to find that
> there was little to no digipeater coverage of the area (grant it i was
> using my th-d7a(g) and 5 watts of TX power) but at least for people in
> the state this is a fairly highly utilized route.  Can someone confirm
> the poor coverage of these highways?  I'm curious if the coverage is
> that bad or if it was just a product of my low transmit power.
>
> Thanks,
> Josh Smith
> KD8HRX
> email/jabber:  juicewvu at gmail.com
> phone:  304.237.9369(c)
>
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