[aprssig] Interesting APES sideeffect

[Steve Dimse]

On Dec 14, 2013, at 7:04 PM, Max Harper <kg4pid at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It would also be useful if all Igates were required to send their position before being allowed to igate any packets. There have been many times that I would be trying to see just where my packets were going only to run into a dead end because the igates position was unknown. There are still some digis out there that don't insert there callsign in the packets path. This affects the mentioned web site as well as Findu and DB0ANF (http://www.db0anf.de/app/aprs).

And it would be useful if elves left us the latest gear under our pillow, but no more realistic. 

APRS was not designed to study propagation. This was true long before the APRS-IS was created. All the variants of digipeater protocols alone rule out it ever being useful. And of course the APRS-IS was designed in the same philosophy, to transport the packet payload not the path. On top of that the relatively strong signals required for packet FM propagation require a very strong band opening. Any effort to deduce propagation or network configuration from the APRS-IS feed is going to at best be misleading, more often flat out wrong.

On the other hand, there is propnet (www.propnet.org). Initially built on APRS technology but now with its own infrastructure. It uses PSK31, so it is FAR more sensitive to band openings, and it works incredibly well. If you are interested in propagation, get involved in propnet, don’t keep bemoaning that APRS doesn’t sprinkle fairy dust on your cheerios every morning ;-)

Steve K4HG