[aprssig] What is APRS, really? USA Coverage?

[Andrew Pavlin]

 FYI, here's my view from an unfiltered APRS-IS feed, showing North-Central and North-East United States filtered to only show stations identified as digipeaters by their symbol code. The green filled-in circles with crosshairs around some of the stations are their range circles based on PHG or RNG parameters. Ignore the smaller filled-in circles in other colors, indicating the station states you specified for APRS-DOS, or the solid rings just barely larger than the icons indicating the Mic-E status of those stations. Note that most digipeaters in the mid-West don't specify an RNG value (or it's extremely small). Also note the number of digipeaters with red question marks; those are "stealth" digis who don't send beacons, and only do their legal identification by doing TRACE digipeating, whose position I estimate using your vicinity plotting in reverse.
https://www.ka2ddo.org/ka2ddo/US-nc-ne-digipeaters-2020Oct23.png

Andrew, KA2DDO

    On Friday, October 23, 2020, 5:34:38 PM EDT, spam8mybrain via aprssig <aprssig at lists.tapr.org> wrote:  
 
 No, because if they did, I could compute a range instead of using the very small default range you specified when you revised the equation for estimating range from PHG. 
Andrew, KA2DDO 

-------- Original message --------
From: Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> 
Date: 10/23/20 17:02 (GMT-05:00) 
To: spam8mybrain <spam8mybrain at yahoo.com> 
Cc: R Kirk <isobar at verizon.net>, aprssig at lists.tapr.org 
Subject: Re: [aprssig] What is APRS, really? USA Coverage? 

But they at least have PHG data?Bob
On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 3:27 PM spam8mybrain <spam8mybrain at yahoo.com> wrote:

Looking around a feed of all digis from APRS-IS, it is sad how few digipeaters report their expected range. 
Andrew, KA2DDO

-------- Original message --------
From: spam8mybrain via aprssig <aprssig at lists.tapr.org> 
Date: 10/23/20 15:09 (GMT-05:00) 
To: Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu>, R Kirk <isobar at verizon.net> 
Cc: aprssig at lists.tapr.org 
Subject: Re: [aprssig] What is APRS, really? USA Coverage? 

YAAC can do it too (View->Layers...->Show Range Circles), although I'm improving it to display more obviously. 
Andrew, KA2DDOauthor of YAAC

-------- Original message --------
From: Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> 
Date: 10/23/20 13:04 (GMT-05:00) 
To: R Kirk <isobar at verizon.net> 
Cc: aprssig at lists.tapr.org 
Subject: Re: [aprssig] What is APRS, really? USA Coverage? 


Apples and oranges sorta.  The APRS (thin line) map is just a plot of actual position reports actually on the highways, not of "coverage",.  Just widening each dot by 30 miles would still not be a "coverage" map? 
 
 We need the overlapping plot of the PHG circles of all digipeaters.

I bet Lynn could do that. 
Bob  
   [Go to Google Images and try "cell phone coverage maps" to get an idea of just how much cell coverage has blossomed,... Then contrast that with the thinner APRS coverage map at Bob's aprs.org site. That map was 2008 and I can't help but think it's even skimpier now that APRS has shrunk.]

This is not to say APRS is not underutilized along with most other forms of amateur radio, but I'd rather leave the discussion of the reasons that is to others. The concept of APRS is a very, very powerful system. As Bob has been saying for how many years, it just needs to be thought of as something more than just location tracking.
   [Really, it is just location tracking despite the many other uses that Bob has thought of that aren't really used. Think Voice Alert, roadside traffic counting etc ...]
I loved it but its time has passed. Look at the traffic volume trend on this group, for instance.

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