[aprssig] TAC-5

[Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists]

The key is the term "tactical".  These are primarily RF-centric, not APRS-IS-centric.  If you use TAC-5 in Australia, it won't affect the local RF operations at the US event simply because the local station will acknowledge locally generated messages (IGates should not gate your TAC-5 acknowledgement to RF since the local IGate has recently seen TAC-5 on RF).  Don't try to make this too complex.  There is a purpose (facilitating tactical communications) that these tactical station identifications fulfill.  They are legal on RF in the country of their use because they also contain the station callsign in the payload.  They are RF-centric which means users of tactical callsigns must understand that world-wide messaging and APRS-IS database usage is not guaranteed to be available due to potential duplication elsewhere.

As for Serj's request that the servers magically determine what is a tactical callsign or not, that is not going to happen in the near-real-time environment of the APRS-IS server.  There are filter programs that can be put on the client machine (APRSFilter for instance) that provide additional filtering capabilities beyond what is available in the generic server-side filters.

73,

Pete Loveall AE5PL
pete at ae5pl dot net

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Rich
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 7:16 AM
> 
> Yes but I can also use TAC-5
> I can't use his callsign and he can't use mine.

Yes, he can use your callsign.  It will make you mad, but as long as it is being injected directly to APRS-IS (not directly to RF), it is "legal" albeit annoying.

> TAC-5 is a free for all.
> 
> Callsigns are unique.

Not necessarily, see above.

> What happens if I run TAC-5 in Australia.
> 
> And you try and message him