[aprssig] Two IGate questions

[Greg D.]

Hi folks,

I have two questions related to my low-level APRS IGate:

1.  Would it be more valuable as a higher level one (raise the antenna and/or power)?

By way of background, I noticed on aprs.fi that I end up being the IGate for a fair percentage of the packets which the area's main Digi, K6FGA-1, digipeats.  I thought, when I was setting it up initially that I would be low-level Digi myself, but that does not appear to be what I built.  All I seem to do is fill-in a hole in the local area as an igate, but I'm also receiving packets digipeated from K6FGA-1, so I'm IGateing them too.

I expect that we're not losing packets from K6FGA-1 for lack of an IGate, so raising my station antenna wouldn't have a net benefit for that purpose.  BUT...

2.  Am I unique, or at least unusual, in that my IGate supports transmission of Internet->RF?  

More background...  I was out of town last weekend, and took along my Kenwood TH-D7 to fill in the odd moments of otherwise empty time.  I tried playing with my new-found resource, the Winlink email system.  From neither of two locations could I get a response to a request for a mail list.  Since both times there was ample (receivable) APRS activity, I presumed my lack of success was not due lack of coverage, but rather to a lack of Transmit capability in the local infrastructure.  

Though, now that I look, I don't see that my requests were logged on aprs.is either...  But the question still stands; is an Inet->RF gateway an unusual resource?  If so, WHY?

Not to be paranoid, but is there a reason for not having more of these?  It seems like anything that Xastir sends is displayed on the screen, so I can monitor for anyone doing stuff they shouldn't do, and disable it if needed.  Beyond that risk, and back to question #1, should I raise my antenna and/or power (it's 500mw right now) to provide a wider service?

Thanks,

Greg  KO6TH


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