[aprssig] Was 6 meter APRS, now 30M tone freq's and PSK

[Stephen H. Smith]

Bob Poortinga wrote:
> Stephen H. Smith<wa8lmf2 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> I didn't know there was ever any explicit support for APRS in AEA products.
>>     
>
> I have a PK-12 which has very basic APRS support for an attached GPS.  It
> transmits the raw NMEA sentences as APRS packets.  I have successfully
> used it in the past as a standalone tracker.
>
> 73 de
>   
Wasn't  the PK12  a TNC2 clone?    The very final TAPR TNC2 firmware 
release ever, Ver 1.1.9, contained this raw NMEA rudimentary tracker 
support.  I wonder if the PK-12 has a (possibly modified) version of 
this firmware in it. 

By "APRS support", I really was thinking in terms of  WIDEn-N 
ssid-decrementing digipeating, callsign substitution, duplicate packet 
suppression and other features unique to APRS compared to conventional 
packet.    

Dumb tracker support is, to me, a non-issue since sending long NMEA 
strings is wasteful of air time on today's busy APRS channels and should 
be discouraged. Further raw NMEA sharply reduces your chance of 
successful digipeats/reception compared to modern compressed formats,  
since the far longer packets are much more likely to get trashed by 
noise pops, mobile flutter, other stations keying up at the same time, etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Stephen H. Smith    wa8lmf (at) aol.com
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