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</head><BODY BGCOLOR="#F8F8F8" ><div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;">Close, but no cigar Alex! We missed by a day.</SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;">I returned home to NM from Las Vegas, NV, on July 6 and went thorough Kingman AZ about a day and a half after you. I run Voice Alert with a D700. </SPAN></div>
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<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;">My experience has been similar to yours. Running VAlert for 3 or 4 years I have only had one QSO due to it. I've done better than that just catching someone talking on .52. Hill-topping works at times, too. I do the drive between western NM and LV, NV a couple times a year with no hits yet. I also run a 3 minute beacon. Occasionally I hear a data burst when in Albuquerque, but not lately. Unfortunately the times I have heard it, I was not inclined to pick up the mic and call. City driving, I'd have answered a call, but didn't initiate one.</SPAN></div>
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<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;">Your coverage through NM and AZ was pretty good considering your power and antenna. I usually run W1-1, W2-1, medium power, with a gain antenna. I had a few more locations post, but not that many. Coverage in western AZ on I40 is pretty thin between Flagstaff and Kingman.</SPAN></div>
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<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;">Still hoping to have a cup of coffee with someone I meet on Voice Alert! Having Voice Alert running doesn't cost me anything, so I'll keep it on.<br /> -- 73 --<br /> J. Gary Bender, WS5N<br /> Fence Lake, New Mexico USA<br /><br /></span></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;">On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:40:05 -0700 (PDT), Alex Carver wrote:</SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">> [ snip ]</SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">> Coverage was spotty in a few places in the middle of the country but I did hear my packets being repeated (the MY POS beep) and I would get info back from friends and family when I took rest stops along the way. Coverage in the western states was better because of the higher stations. I used WIDE1-1, WIDE2-2 with a beacon time of three (3) minutes for the trip to try and ensure entry into an I-Gate. You can pull up my trip history on one of the mapping sites like aprs.fi to see where I managed to get into the network.</SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">></SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">> That part of APRS (mapping, tracking) worked fine for the most part. A few coverage holes here and there showed up due to geometry of the system (the truck blocked half of the antenna radiation pattern), digipeater coverage, or just low power (5 watts maximum).</SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">></SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">> [ snip ]</SPAN></div>
<div><SPAN style="font-size:11pt;color:navy;">> Voice Alert failed completely. Over a road distance of 2,200 miles on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year there was not one squawk from the D7's speaker indicating a nearby station. I know it's been hashed out several times here that people perhaps don't know about it, don't have it set up correctly, don't have a two-way radio that can utilize it, etc. Honestly, I think that it's just not as interesting to operators as some may have us believe. I was on the air for 14-16 hours a day during daylight and evening hours beaconing my position once every three minutes in all kinds of terrain and many populated areas. Surely if it were as important and popular as we hear then I should have heard at least one packet burst come through.</SPAN></div>
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