[aprssig] [APRS] Announcement of WA1PLE-15 digipeater in SW Boston Area

[Tony VE6MVP]

At 11:17 AM 2013-09-24, Robert Bruninga wrote:
>Thanks for the question.  That is the fun part!
>
>The Repeater Object you want to "advertise" is the one that you 
>would recommend to a traveler entering the area and just wanting to 
>TALK to people in the area.  These days, with PL, it is nearly 
>impossible for a traveler to play radio while mobile in a new area 
>without knowing this critical info.  So it is your call.  If you 
>were entering the *coverage area of this digi* what repeater 
>would  you have the best chance of finding someone.  That is the one 
>to advertise.
>
>Fortunately, in a KPC-3, you actually have room for 3 such frequency 
>objects if needed.  They TX simplex direct once every 10 minutes 
>(and only when the channel as heard by the digi is clear).  Hence 
>great info, in real-time, but at no cost to the load on the channel.

As a traveller who seldom has a passenger I very much like the 
concept of repeater objects and we've introducing them around here in 
Alberta.  And yes in parts of Alberta amateurs have gone a bit 
overboard in creating dozens of repeater objects which are being 
transmitted from their home igates but I digress.  <smile>

However I disagree with one portion of your statement.  The "direct' 
part. The digi network out my area of rural Alberta is just 
awesome.   It is a relatively quiet network with little mobile 
traffic and very little overlap between the sites.  My subjective 
observations while mobile are that the coverage of a digi for the 
mobile station to receive packets is substantially less than the 
coverage of the FM repeater when on the same antenna.      Voice 
coverage might be 60 or 70 kms while receiving the packet might only 
work out about 30 kms.

Given a ten minute object transmit time the traveller could be in 
range of the voice repeater for up to half an hour before the 
traveller knows it exists.

Therefore I would suggest that the repeater object have a path of 
WIDE1-1 or WIDE2-1 so the adjacent digipeaters see the packet and 
display it on your device as you pass near those digipeaters.  So now 
you the amateur radio operator can make the decision if you are close 
enough to the voice repeater and tune to the frequency.

Tony

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.tapr.org/pipermail/aprssig_lists.tapr.org/attachments/20130924/59e4cbcb/attachment.html>