[aprssig] FREQ Object Formats

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Mon, 7 May 2012, Bob Bruninga wrote:

> That does not matter. I am talking about the standards BUILT INTO THE RADIO.
> If the radios in a given region have a STANDARD offset, then that is what is
> used.  If a country does not use the standard, then of course it does not
> apply and the actual offset must be included.

Bob,

I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with Lynn and others about this.

Please consider use cases outside the scope of existing radios and local 
standards that someone may or may not be aware of. For example:

If you were to travel to Finland, you might take a glimpse at Finland's 
APRS view using aprs.fi or APRSIS32. You might spot a repeater there and 
decide to try to work it. You probably would not know that our 70 cm 
repeaters have either -1.6 MHz or -2.0 MHz offsets, and the US variant of 
the TH-D72 you might bring would not know it either.

Even if you would not travel to the Finland, I might come to Dayton for a 
second time, and face the same use case.

The software we write is used worldwide, and there is no way we can make 
it know about local "standard" offsets, especially for areas which have no 
standard offsets.

The "standards" really are not, and whatever is transmitted should 
explicitly contain all information necessary to reach the repeater and 
leave no space for guesswork. That is the only way we can make it really 
work technically, and in a way that is friendly to the user.


PS. This year I'm going to Friedrichshafen, not Dayton, but I might come 
to the DCC. I'm bringing a MotoTRBO, the speaker on my TH-D72 broke. The 
DMR rig has no keyboard frequency entry so I'll have to use programming 
software at home to preload frequencies.

   - Hessu