[aprssig] Another Road Trip Testing APRS-over-VARA Coming

[Stephen H Smith]

Over the period  8 October 2024 to 26 October 2024, I will be on another 
extensive road trip, running HF APRS both over classic AX.25 packet, and over 
VARA.

A friend of mine is flying from Los Angeles to Chicago on the 8th. I will then 
take her for a fall color tour of northern Michigan, before driving her back to 
Los Angeles. This will be a long looping itinerary west from Michigan on I-80 
to the Mississippi River, then south following the Great River Road (the 
secondary roads along the banks of the Mississippi) to New Orleans.   Then west 
across Texas to northern New Mexico, southern Colorado and Arizona back to 
Calfornia.   For anyone wanting to log four states in one transmission, I will 
be stopping at the "4-Corners" point on the Navajo Nation where Utah, Colorado, 
New Mexico and Arizona meet at one point.

I will be operating HF exclusively on 30 meters this time (no 60 meters 
tests).  As in the past I will use multiple SSIDs:

   -  WA8LMF (no SSID) is 2M VHF 144.39 and direct-to-Internet cellular data.

   -  WA8LMF-2 is 30M HF conventional 300-baud AX.25 packet APRS

   -  WA8LMF-3 is 30M HF APRS-over-VARA

Because these are full desktop-type APRS installations (3 instances of UIview) 
running on my newly-commisioned Panasonic CF-53 "Toughbook" mobile laptop in 
the car, I can receive APRS messages on any of the three modes. As before, the 
mobile rig is a Yaesu FT-891 running into a 30 -meter Quicksilver Radio 
"QuickStick" hamstick-type mono-band whip.


My personal APRS   igate/mapping-webservers will be following my trip at:
<http://WA8LMF.net/map>
(These displays only show what my home station in central Michigan (East 
Lansing area) is hearing OFF-THE-AIR --  not from the Internet.)

Additionally, my new "RoadTrip Tracker" page at
<http://WA8LMF.net/RoadTrip>
will provide a series of fixed-scale shaded-relief maps of the trip. The road 
trip tracker uses a combination of off-the-air reception and the APRS Internet 
feed.


30 meters normally has a skip zone of 250-300 miles; I.e. my home station in 
Michigan could never hear anything CLOSER than about Chicago, Cincinnati  or 
Toronto, Ontario.  Travels anywhere inside Michigan were never heard by my 30M 
igates when I was the ONLY APRS-over-VARA igate on the air.
     Now that WA7GMX in the state of Washington, and WB8SKP in western Kentucky 
now appear to be running full-time APRS-over-VARA igates on 30 meters as well, 
the HF coverage should be much more consistent everywhere, even inside 
Michigan, then in the past.   My trip up north in Michigan should be heard and 
igated by one or both of these other stations.  (Assuming another solar 
explosion/geomagnetic storm doesn't wipe out HF entirely!)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen H. Smith wa8lmf (at) aol.com
Skype:        WA8LMF
EchoLink:  Node #  14400  [Think bottom of the 2-meter band]
Home Page: http://wa8lmf.net

APRS-over-VARA igates now operating on 30 & 60 meters
<http://WA8LMF.net/map>

"Studio B" Ham Shack on Wheels
<http://WA8LMF.net/Aliner>

-- APRS over VARA  --
<http://wa8lmf.net/APRSoverVARA.>


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