[aprssig] Bouncing locations

[Tom Russo]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 01:57:55PM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <bruninga at usna.edu> flavor, containing:
> From: Zachary Beougher
> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 12:49 PM
> 
> If you go to http://aprs.fi/?call=a%2FKD8KSN-9 and view my path over the 
> past three+ hours, you will see I made a trip down to Frazysburg and back 
> home.  I went down, came back, shut the beacon off, and it was about 10:40a 
> this morning.  I just got on APRSIS (KD8KSN-12), and I had a message that I 
> sent from my mobile (KD8KSN-9 - the one I am having issues with) this 
> morning *along with the response from the other station* waiting in my 
> inbox.  I went out to APRS.fi, and it has me plotted down in Frazysburg at 
> 1620z, going 34mph.  The beacon is shut off at the radio (it is just 
> monitoring a repeater), and it is sitting about 50ft from me right now ??? 
> definitely not in Frazysburg.  I know that aprs.fi plots you at your last 
> location, but according I checked it this morning and it had me back home, 
> now it has me randomly in Frazysburg.  It is almost like a packet is being 
> saved at a specific location and then being transmitted at a random moment.
> 
> I have had this issue over the past few days when I go into Columbus ??? I go 
> in, come back, and about 2 hours later is suddenly plots me somewhere along 
> the path I took 3 hours before, along with about 2-3 other stops along the 
> way.

My first guess would be a digi somewhere along the route running a broken TNC 
that is buffering  packets.  It happens really often with KPC-3+ (the PLUS 
model only) that are running in KISS mode (and only in KISS mode).  The best 
way to fix it permanently is to sell the TNC and buy a different model, but 
the temporary fix is to reset it every few days.  I know some folks even have 
their KPC-3+ on a timer to cycle its power every day just to work around this 
problem.

Of course there's plenty of other ways this could be happening, but that's the
one I've seen responsible for that sort of behavior most often.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."