[aprssig] Meteor Mode? (works)

[Bob Bruninga]

> 50.62 is the standard APRS/packet frequency in North
> America.  Due to the low volume of local traffic on 
> this channel, it has also been adopted as the meteor
> scatter freq.

The MS mode built into APRSdos would send 1 second packets for 15 seconds out of every minute according to which quadrant of the country you were in.  This way, everyone in one quadrant was transmitting at the same time, and everyone else in the country was listening without any local QRM.  It workd great.  A dozen or so MS packets typically captured by everyone overnight.

So nothing wrong with blasting away in your area IF it is not being used locally for 6m APRS.  Then you can see if anyone else copies you.  Since we have a few 6m digipeaters in teh DC area, and I hope at least one IGate, then presumably someone out west could blast away on 50.62 and watch the APRS-IS to see if anything gets through.

OR, flip that around.  I have ncouraged our handful of 6m APRS chaps to set their rates to 1 minute includeing the digipeaters to try to keep the channel somewhat occupied.  This means if you live anywhre 500 to 1200 miles from DC and poitned a beam at us and monitored all night you might capture one of them.

But expect a rare success.  Because instead of transmitting every second, we are only transmitting every minute, so the success rate will be 1/60th of what it would be in real MS operations.

A great experiment.  I remember how fun it was back in the early days to check the screen in the morning and see how many packets got through.

Bob, WB4APR