[aprssig] Cleaning up the Global APRS Satellite ground station network?- New Symbol [SGATE mode for APRX?]

[la3qma at aprs.la]

Den 09.08.2017 22:26, skrev Kenneth Finnegan:
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 2:57 AM, <la3qma at aprs.la> wrote:
> 
>> was talking about APRX. I really do not understand why it's not
>> possible to add a satellite option in the public release.
> 
> There's two problems:
> 1. Adding support for a new operation mode, adding tests to validate
> it, adding documentation for it to the user manual, and forever
> continuing to support the feature and ensuring that no future patch
> breaks this functionality is a lot of work.

Making APRX from the beginning i guess is much work. Adding 
functionality less work but still time consuming.
Documentation? Describe what it does and how to enable? Compared to the 
rest of the documentation this is almost a one liner.

Other can contribute to update the docs.

> 2. I'm totally unconvinced that this feature is worth any effort just
> to make sure that people trying to work satellites can use the APRS-IS
> as an RF analysis tool. If you want proof that you've bounced a packet
> off a satellite, either complete a contact with another human and
> trade QSO cards, or take a photo of your radio showing your packet
> echo off the satellite and post it to Twitter.

It's not an RF-tool in the way you are thinking.

I can reach i.e ISS but usually i never see my packet echo off in the 
radio depending on my position and/or the path of the satellite. 
SOmetimes we are 3-4 hams in the "same area" and ISS after the rest of 
europe is "finnished" we have a window between 0-5min.

> I'd like to have someone set up an I-gate on 144.390 in sat-gate mode
> with a 30 second delay and see if anyone complains.

>> Just make it hard to activate this function ;-)
> 
> So I should be putting all this effort into implementing this feature,
> and then making the user experience for it suck because it's a
> mis-feature?

All this effort?. In APRSC if you forget to configure something it's all 
about removing a special line in the configfile.

I understand that you are not interested in satellites what so ever and 
don't care of supporting this.

There are no good igate software for satellites. There are few satgates 
probably due to this.
satellites on aprs is part of the regular aprs-is network.

Not all people can install APRSC, APRX and then get a program to filter 
out non direct stations and insert this to the regular aprs-is network. 
Most people are able to get APRX to work. Maybe we can get APRSG to 
implement this
  satgate mode. http://www.pakettiradio.net/aprsg/

73 de LA3QMA
Kai Gunter