So weather stations can send weather data to #APRS and APRS.fi will nicely plot it. Can I send other data? I have some lake buoys that I'm going to deploy that measure turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and pH. Could I send that data to APRS in the same way?
My ham neighbor, W7HGK, went SK last year; over the weekend his widow gave me a chance to take a few things from his shack before the local ham club helps disassemble the rest.
Besides a bunch of components for homebrew radios, I took a small selection of his packet gear. Not that I expect the books to be up-to-date, but I enjoy reading old technical books to see how much things have/haven't changed.
My #LoRa#APRS tracker is working very well. Even with relatively few i-gates I've got great coverage in the areas where I roam on a daily/weekly basis. I'll try to write up another blog post on the project soon. This is fun!
The city I live in has a decent digi like... 8-10 miles north but nothing local (read: nothing I can hit with an HT)
My VHF rig has two settings: 5W and 45W
Should I set myself up as a WIDE1? I don't quite know where the boundary lies between "if there's a gap in coverage, fill it" and "that'll just cause more APRS congestion"
Update: BetterYAAC (as I'm calling it) now supports overlays on all map symbols (as per the APRS 1.2 spec and symbols-new.txt) instead of just the alternate table ones!
This includes the operator bit - using the "O" (oscar) overlay to indicate that an operator is present and available at that station.
Let me know if anyone else wants a copy, for now the code is private but I can easily flip that switch if enough folks want YAAC with a few hacked-on changes.
I did it. Not only do I have a working VHF base station, but I've gotten #packetRadio working on it!
Fun fact: My G5RV is somewhat resonant on 2 meters. I have no idea how or why but it is. (and somehow, it's better on the 440 band). Not something I'd use long term (not high enough, and still not a good match), but it's also close enough that I'd feel comfortable setitng up with it. So I did. APRS IGate (and briefly acting as a digi), a little (BBS) packet, but I also just got Winlink... funnily enough, to reach that RMS, I needed to relay through the KA-Node of the person I was sending the message to just because they have more power out than I do.
And this is the rig that I broke, broke again, and repaired!
Got my K1 cables for the #DigiRig today, meaning I should be able to have an audio I/F to most HTs. (And if they're RS-232 serial, I can program them too.) So I just did some low-power APRS testing... and sure enough, plug in the GT-5R and my 878 was decoding packets from it.
Only one issue: the AnyTone 878 doesn't PTT in the same way, apparently, so that's not doing anything. I guess that means this cable is Baofeng only... but you know, the GT-5R has "enough" filtering (certainly more than the UV-5R) and a portable APRS station is a portable APRS station. I think I can work with that.
Another success for #openStreetMap edits. This #forest that I have been for my entire life had a old settlement with a now in #ruins church. Almost nothing on web. I drew it as accurate as possible. Now St. Christophers church is on the #map. Whole day I edited 30km tracks and paths that is not visible from the #satellite pictures. Ate some good pastry and send some #aprs packets to complete the day with #hamRadio. #osm#gis#qgis#amateurradio#amateurfunk
I think I must be going a little crazy..... I just heard a very distinctive dial up modem sound.... Maybe 9600 baud.
No radios are on....so it wasn't something sending packet or aprs.
But that's not the crazy part .... No one else in the room heard it, I was the only one.....
It wasnt loud, and didn't last very long. For the life of me I have no idea what would have made the sound...
I've started putting together notes on different #APRS handhelds just because I've had difficulty locating the same info myself. There are errors right now that I haven't fixed yet. If anyone wants to help by sending info, feel free!
Figured out how to connect to the old #Kantronics#KPC3 that I picked up a while back at a hamvention. Now to see if I can sort out how to use it for an #APRS digipeter/iGate.
I probably will need to locate an old 2m radio as I don't think any of the HTs that I have would work well. Hmmm
@kc2ihx for the life of me I cannot figure out the #APRS skier icon. And I can't find any examples of stations using it in aprs.fi. Whenever I try to use the symbol [S from the new table at http://www.aprs.org/symbols.html I get a wall cloud. I've searched around a bit but can't find any helpful info.
Spent alot of mental energy writing this repo last night, It's still a WIP but this is sufficient for now
This is an All-In-One repo for #APRS with both Cross-Band and Simplex Support utilizing Direwolf, kissutil and Telnet with support for both Rigs and #RTLSDR RX Only IGates