[aprssig] APRS Travels

[Bob Bruninga]

Is your APRS ready for the Thanksgiving Holidays?

The highest travel time of the year.  Lots of APRS operators will be going
mobile to new unfamiliar areas and will be expecting to see on their APRS
radios the local information they need to play ham radio.

Is YOUR local digi putting out locally useful info? (simplex direct every 10
min)?  The #1 beacon should be the locally recommended voice repeater for
travelers.  It should be in the APRS FREQUENCY object format:

;147.105md*111111zDDMM.mmN/DDDMM.mmWrTnnn Rxxm Net730pmTu Mtg3rdTu

Where 147.105md is 9 bytes long (I used md for Maryland)
Tnnn is the tone in Hz (no decimals!)
Rxxm is the repeater's range in miles (or km)
 Net730pmTu is 10 bytes of weekly net meeting times
 Mtg3rdT is 8 bytes of monthly club meeting times.

See http://aprs.org/localinfo.html

The reason for the format is consistency and also it displays well on the
Kenwood and Yaesu mobile displays 10x10, 10x10x8, and 20x20x20.

Also don't forget VoiceAlert CTCSS 100 for meeting other APRS hams while
mobile.

Bob, WB4APR