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If you're talking about AX.25 TOCALLs it's not fair to say that it's
a limitation of the TNCs - upper case callsigns are required by the
AX.25 spec:<br>
<br>
3.12. Address-Field Encoding<br>
The address field of all frames consists of a destination, source
and (optionally) two Layer 2 repeater subfields.<br>
Each subfield consists of an amateur callsign and a Secondary
Station Identifier (SSID). The callsign is made up<br>
of upper-case alpha and numeric ASCII characters only. The SSID is a
four-bit integer that uniquely identifies<br>
multiple stations using the same amateur callsign.<br>
<br>
That doesn't apply to the APRS message spec, of course. And if
you're dealing with a TNC in converse mode on the receive side you
can spoof AX.25 TOCALLs, too. Embed a CR/LF in the packet payload
and insert a TNC2 style header and your converse-mode connected
software can't tell that it's not another packet, assuming the TNC
is passing the CR/LF characters.<br>
<br>
Scott<br>
N1VG<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/25/2016 2:07 PM, Robert Bruninga
via aprssig wrote:<br>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal">There is an unintended ambiguity in the
APRS SPEC regarding the addressee in the APRS MESSAGE format.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was intended that the TOCALL of any
transmitted message could be sent to ANY 9 character callsign
field and this included mixed-case. Although TNC’s have
historically forced callsigns to UPEPRCASE only, this is only
a limitation of TNC’s and was not intended to be a limitation
of APRS.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">STATION names, OBJECT names, ITEM names
were intended to be a general 9 character mixed case field in
APRS padded to 9 with spaces.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We just noticed that some radios do not
allow sending an APRS message to a mixed case address.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, the QIKCOM-2 satellite which
does DTMF-to-Voice and APRS-to-voice has a special message
address of “QIKCOMsay” for all messages it is expected to
speak. So some people will not be able to exercise this
text-to-voice messaging capability.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wont make this mistake in any future
satellite, but we are stuck with it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">SO, we might ought-to-identify all APRS
radios and APRS clients that have this uppercase-only
restriction on MESSAGE Callsigns.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can say the Kenwoods have it. Others?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">See <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://aprs.org/aprs11.html">http://aprs.org/aprs11.html</a>
and specifically, see:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">See <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://aprs.org/aprs11/aprs-names-and-spaces.txt">http://aprs.org/aprs11/aprs-names-and-spaces.txt</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bob, WB4APR</p>
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