[aprssig] APRS Message Callsign SPEC- Ambiguity

[Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr)]

Yaesu APRS radios will not ack a message if it comes from an -SSID that 
is not -0 (suppressed) through -15 even though the APRS protocol for 
messages is always in the payload portion for 3rd party packets gated 
from the APRS-IS to RF with the ack coming back.

APRSISCE/32 upcases APRS message targets.  At least I think it does but 
I didn't check the source code just now.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32

On 4/25/2016 5:07 PM, Robert Bruninga via aprssig wrote:
>
> There is an unintended ambiguity in the APRS SPEC regarding the 
> addressee in the APRS MESSAGE format.
>
> It was intended that the TOCALL of any transmitted message could be 
> sent to ANY 9 character callsign field and this included mixed-case.  
> Although TNC’s have historically forced callsigns to UPEPRCASE only, 
> this is only a limitation of TNC’s and was not intended to be a 
> limitation of APRS.
>
> STATION names, OBJECT names, ITEM names were intended to be a general 
> 9 character mixed case field in APRS padded to 9 with spaces.
>
> We just noticed that some radios do not allow sending an APRS message 
> to a mixed case address.
>
> Unfortunately, the QIKCOM-2 satellite which does DTMF-to-Voice and 
> APRS-to-voice has a special message address of “QIKCOMsay” for all 
> messages it is expected to speak.  So some people will not be able to 
> exercise this text-to-voice messaging capability.
>
> I wont make this mistake in any future satellite, but we are stuck 
> with it.
>
> SO, we might ought-to-identify all APRS radios and APRS clients that 
> have this uppercase-only restriction on MESSAGE Callsigns.
>
> I can say the Kenwoods have it.  Others?
>
> See http://aprs.org/aprs11.html and specifically, see:
>
> See http://aprs.org/aprs11/aprs-names-and-spaces.txt
>
> Bob, WB4APR
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> aprssig mailing list
> aprssig at tapr.org
> http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.tapr.org/pipermail/aprssig_lists.tapr.org/attachments/20160425/693cc491/attachment.html>