[aprssig] APRS Desert? & Sick sounding Digis, etc...

[Steve Noskowicz]

I am returning from an Illinois to Crater Lake OR. trip.  Trip ODO around 3500 mi. so far...

This is a D700 set to (usually) 50 W. @ 1 minute rate and 1/4 wave antenna in front of the Yakima roof box (my MFJ 5/8 broke):
Here's my track:
http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/track.cgi?call=k9dci-9&start=9999&geo=usa.geo

Western NB dead out to Cheyenne.  Very similar to what I got several years ago.  

NW Nevada also dead, but mountains make things difficult.  The Western Illinois gap is probably when I was having the dreaded "OPENING TNC" lock up and before I did the GPS and TNC reset thingy (I uploaded this fix to the Yahoo D700 Files Area)   (See P.S. below) 

Flawless operation since.

I also made a loop around Crater Lake on Aug 2.  Rate set to 0.2 minute:
  http://aprs.fi/?call=K9DCI-9&dt=1282521600&mt=roadmap&z=12&timerange=604800

Pretty cool!  The camp ground is the lower left stuff and the road down to it had little coverage.

On another thread:
In addition there was at least one Digi servicing the western part of the loop that sounded really poor and didn't decode.  I couldn't spend any time to figure out if I could determine its call.  There was another with really low deviation.  Digi OPs gotta' LISTEN to their transmitter or measure regularly. (I saw that Software Scope post).  There are also several of these in my home area of NE Illinois

--
 73, Steve, K9DCI   USN (Vet) MOT (Ret) Ham (Yet)

P.S. To clear my OPENING TNC problem, I used a wireless (XBee) USB-to-Serial setup *similar* to the thing John, W2FS is selling in QST; his Virtual Serial Cable (VSC).  I conveniently and coincidently got a consulting job that was using the modules and got my contact to buy me the Development kit with modules that do the same thing that John's do...sorry John.
John:   http://www.coastalchip.com/VSC-X/index.htm
Digi (Xbee Development kit):
  http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/zigbee-mesh/xbee-digimesh-2-4.jsp#overview 

--- On Fri, 8/27/10, Steve_wG0AT <qrp.wg0at at gmail.com> wrote:

> Did a 1000 mile road from my QTH to
> Kearney,NB and back yesterday. (glad I don't do that
> often!)
> 
> I was really surprised to find out that there's virtually
> no APRS activity in NB along I-80.