[aprssig] WXBOT -- weather forecast via APRS Message

[Greg Troxel]

Steve Noskowicz via aprssig <aprssig at tapr.org> writes:

> My personal opinion is that the CWOP stations are just clutter on the
> map when watching, or looking for/at hams.  This is especially true
> when looking at the nearest stations list.

This is more of a comment about display systems, but it has echoes of
the SATGATE discussion.

Basically, direct injection into APRS-IS  is not ham radio.  I would
like to see data of what's over the air.  Someday I'll actually hook up
a radio to do that.   Having CWOP stations (with xWnnnn or callsign)
appear when sent via Internet can be useful if you want to know weather,
and don't care that the weather data path is not survivable.

Similarly, there are lots of repeaters injected via Internet.  I don't
know if they are actually on the air, but when I watch the radio
directly I don't tend to see them.

So, three mini-rants:

1) the APRS community should discourage direct-to-internet for weather
and repeaters, at least considering it vastly second class

2) APRS-IS display programs should have easy filters to omit
direct-to-internet objects, particularly wx and rptr.  At least at for
aprs.fi this seems hard.  (I know i could run xastir and get a feed and
add features - I'm talking about trying to change the culture.)

3) Again, dup detection is doing what it should, but it's causing the
system to have bad properties, which is undetected brittleness.
Perhaps all direct-to-internet messages should be delayed 100s or
something, to allow any over-the-air to catch up, and to provide an
incentive to transmit.

73 de n1dam