[aprssig] VOICE Alert Speaks

[Bob Bruninga]

Driving home today I heard the Voice Alert bleeps of an old friend but one who invariably has his Voice Alert volume turned down, to the point, that I rarely expect an answer.  (Though I do fuss at him whenever I can raise him once every few months or so).

But his bleeps were very strong, and he was not responding to Voice Alert, so I sent him a message "QSY 105" to come over to the repeater I was on.  He came!

He said, WOW,  he had the volume on BOTH sides of the radio turned down, but because he has the D700 Voice Chip, the radio said "Message from WB4APR".  The fact that the voice worked even with both volumes turned down was a real perk.

So then, I changed the message to "%QSY 105" and bingo.  The radio SAID "Message from WB4APR QSY 105".  What could be better for alerting a distracted transmittng-CQ-but-not-listening driver?!

Anyway, don't forget that we have had Text to (limited)speech in the D700 radio for over a decade now, yet few people use it (because they don't have the optional voice chip installed)... but it can come in handy...

Remember too that other APRS clients will speak messages when the % is used at the start of a word or the message.  Of course, the D700 does not have voice synthesis, but it can SPELL and PRONOUNCE the numbers and if you look up the codes, you can get it to SPEAK any word in the radio's vocabulary the same way.

My old APRSdata program would send out announcements whenver satellites were  in view, and the radio would SPELL the satellite name, tell you the direction and then speak LOW or HIGH to tell you the elevation.

So many little nuances to APRS...

Bob, WB4APR