[aprssig] Best Dual Band Mobile radio for APRS

[Keith Sproul]

Hello All

I am Keith Sproul, WU2Z, one of the original authors of APRS (MacAPRS and WinAPRS).  I have not been doing much Ham Radio in recent years, but am no newly retired and getting back to using APRS.

I have a Yaesu FTM-400XDR in my van, and it does fine transmitting my position to APRS. It also will send APRS data out to a serial port, but it is receive ONLY, at least as far as I can figure out.  And the data isn't formatted the way it should be for feeding into an APRS program. I can fix that in the program, because I can't figure out how to fix it in the radio.

I am installing a PC running Linux in my van with a big screen. I will be running X-APRS (MacAPRS updated to run on Linux) on this. I don't need this to transmit since the FTM-400XDR already does that, but I want to be able to receive all of th local data and display it on the screen.

What dual band mobile radio is the BEST for using with a laptop running APRS?

I am willing to buy a new radio, but I am having a hard time figure out what to buy.

Keith Sproul, WU2Z
wu2z at skychariot.com