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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Well we had an urban search training
deployment this morning and everyone in the command post were impressed with
APRS. I had enough hardware for three beacons, two backpack and one vehicle. We
had three "lost people" with one bloodhound tracking each. We teamed with
bicycles and vehicles to hasty search based on the DOT and location of the
bloodhounds. The CP watched the hound (actually the handler, me) on the
real-time APRS monitor and re-vectored the hasty team ahead of us as we made
turns etc.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The Bloodhound trackers are a hydration pack with
the Garmin Etrex GPS on the front strap and the TH-D7 on the backside with a
gain antenna. The command post is using UI-View/Precision Mapping with the
exclusions enabled for !TEAM* which shows only our teams. We pre-loaded the
laptop with aerial photos and topo maps for underlays. You can check out the
history on FINDU to see where we were. TEAM1 was a vehicle and TEAM2 & 3
were on foot behind the dogs. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Getting to your reply, I had hopped that the manual
was being literal when it said the TH-D7 would only 'receive' stations
with SPCL. I agree the CP is the most important and filtering is easy there. I
just could see a scenario where we might ask a team to go find another that had
gone off the air (voice and APRS) and the team could track using the D7 display
to the last beacon from the other team. As for the waypoints in the GPS, we
tried that but every beacon in Southern California was in the list and swamped
the memory. The 10 mile limit would help that, we will try that next
time.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I agree with you, SAR resource management without
all the voice radio traffic is a great goal. There have been times we have been
in a wide area wilderness search and every 5-10 minutes the CP is calling teams
for GPS UTM coordinates, which are read back to verify, then hand plotted on a
map.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Steve Sobodos<BR>Orange County Sheriff's
Department</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Search and Rescue Bloodhound Team<BR>"Sometimes,
the light at the end of the tunnel is accompanied by bloodhounds."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=hgerhardt@wavecable.com href="mailto:hgerhardt@wavecable.com">Herb
Gerhardt</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=steve@scsvideo.com
href="mailto:steve@scsvideo.com">Steve Sobodos</A> ; <A
title=aprssig@lists.tapr.org href="mailto:aprssig@lists.tapr.org">TAPR APRS
Mailing List</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=archer@eskimo.com
href="mailto:archer@eskimo.com">WE7U Curt Mills</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, March 04, 2006 8:57
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> RE: [aprssig] TH-D7 and Group
Code</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff>Steve,</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>I think you
are not reading the manual correctly. The group code refers to messages
that the radio will receive and display, it does not "filter" the received
stations in the station list. All received stations will still be
entered into the list for every "good" signal that radio
hears.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>I am not
sure how to filter that listing to just your SAR teams other than going to a
different frequency. Of course that will work giving you a "private"
APRS system but at the expense of not being able to utilize the existing APRS
infrastructure of your existing APRS Network and digi's. You would
have to install temporary digis in your search areas. That would make
things much more complicated.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>Keep in
mind, that if your teams use a mapping GPS like the Garmin V, then the
stations can be plotted at the real time location on everyone's GPS map.
You can then set the scale so that you can see the position of each SAR team
on the GPS topo or street map. You can also measure the distance and
direction of each of the other teams from your location. Not all GPS's
have this capability of plotting the stations the Kenwood APRS radio hears on
a real time map so you will have to check the capability of the GPS units that
are being utilized. On the Garmin units, the heard stations are plotted
as Waypoints and only the position of the last heard position is shown on the
GPS screen.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>Also by
using tactical calls, like TEAM1, TEAM2, etc, it will make it easy to find
these plotted waypoints in the Waypoint list of the GPS since they will all be
grouped together.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>So, what
you want to accomplish can be done quite easily but on the GPS instead of the
radio. You can control the distance of stations you want plotted on the
GPS as Waypoints by specifying a distance of say 10 miles in your Kenwood
radio, then only the stations it hears that are within 10 miles of that radio
will be sent to the GPS for plotting. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>Also keep
in mind that the APRS program that is run in Base Camp is the important one
that needs to show the location of each team so the IC can get a better feel
for where his teams are located. The teams can then be told to move to
other positions via radio communications. I don't think that each team
being able to know exactly where the other teams are located is very important
during a search since it will distract the searcher from his search duties
which is what he is really out in the field for. My idea is just to put
a tracker into each of the SAR team's backpack and let the SAR teams perform
their normal search duties. The main person should be in SAR Base with a
real time APRS computer program running and zoomed into just the search
area. That way the other distant APRS station really do not deter from
you mission.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>Please keep
me informed as to how your group makes out in utilizing these trackers during
your SAR activities. This to me is one of the few "real" uses for APRS
and trackers. This was the reason I first got into APRS. Curt and
I will be giving a presentation at our WA SAR Conference in mid May on the
Integration of APRS into SAR Activities, so any info you can provide to us
would be appreciated. It will be a Power Point presentation, so if you
have any good digital pictures or Power Point slide, they would be
appreciated.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=249412004-05032006></SPAN><SPAN
class=249412004-05032006><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff>Thanks and good
luck,</DIV>
<DIV>
<P><FONT size=2>Herb, KB7UVC<BR>NW APRS Group, West Sound Coordinator<BR>Our
WEB Site: <A href="http://www.nwaprs.info/"
target=_blank>http://www.nwaprs.info</A><BR><BR> </FONT>
</FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=249412004-05032006></P></DIV></SPAN>
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<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B>
aprssig-bounces@lists.tapr.org [mailto:aprssig-bounces@lists.tapr.org]<B>On
Behalf Of</B> Steve Sobodos<BR><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, March 04, 2006 5:46
PM<BR><B>To:</B> aprssig@lists.tapr.org<BR><B>Subject:</B> [aprssig] TH-D7
and Group Code<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<P align=left>I plan on using the D7's in search and rescue. I thought that
putting SPCL in the group code (Unprotocol), the D7 would only "Hear" the
other stations with the same code. I quote from the manual :"Enter “SPCL”.
You will receive only APRS packets that include SPCL as a Group Code."</P>
<P align=left>The use in SAR is that the teams can see how close and what
direction the other teams are. The problem in Southern California is that
there are very many other stations and the list in the D7 gets so long it
becomes quite a pain to find the other stations in the list. I set up a
couple of D7's with the Group Code of SPCL but the D7 still hears everybody.
</P>
<P align=left>What am I doing wrong? Is there another way to filter the D7
beacons?</P>
<P align=left>The Group Code does me no good in UI-View as it seems to not
be supported as a filter. I end using the callsign in the exclusions list in
the form "!TEAM*" to only include calls that start with TEAM.</P>
<P align=left> </P>
<P
align=left> </P></FONT></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>