APRS |
| A new APRS digi-peater has been placed into service at Mount Tolo in Central Point. It's station ID is MTTOLO and has the W9PCi call. This digi provides users in the North Valley area and the I-5 corridor with coverage to the APRS network. It is linked with the W9PCi-3 digi. Both of these repeaters have direct paths to other area digi's as well as "long" paths to digi's up to the Canadian border to the north and as far south as San Diego. Some coverage to the Pacific coast and to the Eastern border states is available but we need more digi's in these areas to permit reliable coverage into the APRS system. Send us your APRS maps in digital photo format and I'll post them on this page for others to view. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. The W9PCi-3 Digi-peater operates on 144.390Mhz and is located south of Historic Jacksonville at an elevation of approximately 2,600'. It is has direct shots to several Digi-peaters in both Oregon and California. It's purpose is to fill a void in the Applegate and Rogue Valley's and to permit APRS stations traveling in this area to be "repeated" so that they may be seen on APRS mapping stations throughout the world. KL7VK-3 operates an APRS HF Gateway in Central Point. WB7AWL is working on an APRS I-GATE so that we have Internet access as well and reports that it should be up "full-time" mid-January 2002. K7MKG is working on putting up an IRLP (Internet Radio Linking Project) station which, although not related to APRS, is another mode of communicating over the Internet. He operates a LINUX station on APRS and will be using the same platform for the IRLP station. WB7SZM has his Wx station back on the air and reporting local weather over his APRS station. Jack is also working with others in the local area on a PSK31 station - we look forward to his efforts in this "digital" form of communications. Thanks to Jack (WB7SZM), Kirby (KL7VK) and Jack (K7MKG) for their encouragement and help setting up this repeater. We will post APRS maps to this sites so that others may see what APRS looks like in this area. N7ZMR is also working on a new digi. I've seen it on the air several times over the past weeks and understand that it is scheduled to be placed on one of the mountain tops in the Grants Pass area when weather permits. Thanks to Tyson for his efforts promoting APRS. E-mail your comments to the address below. |
Benefits of APRS
"to the new amateur" |
| MESSAGING - Send "canned" messages to others while mobile. Send any message to another APRS station regardless of the operator actually being at his station; similar to "Instant Internet Messaging" like ICQ. The messages are there when the operator returns. | TRAVEL INFO - Check on the progress of travel of a mobile station. Information available to a GPS is reported to other APRS stations like elevation, speed, ETA's, location in Lon / Lat, time stamped information and "trace" data. Some of us like to know where our friends are and the progress they make in their travels. |
| FINDU - Go to "www.findu.com" to locate others with APRS stations. Obtain photo maps, graphic maps and detailed maps of your station and keep in contact with your ham friends as they travel. | EMERGENCY - Simple systems for emergency communications which includes position, rate of travel or movement, and messaging. Help others who are simply lost. |
| FUN - Like most enthusiast's, we enjoy the challenge of various forms of communications. APRS can be no more than just pure fun! | WX - Weather stations are setup around the world and linked to APRS stations. Temperature, Wind Speed, Rainfall amounts, Barometric pressure, and other weather data is easily obtained from APRS. See local WX or what its like where you're traveling -- no matter where you go on the planet. |
| INTERNET - APRS is on the internet as well through "GATEWAYS" called I-GATES. This permits APRS stations the ability to overlay "world" maps with stations all around the planet. Just click on an APRS station, and send them a message. | HF - APRS stations can provide a gateway using the HF band near 10Mhz as well. This is referred to an HF-GATE and provides just another connectivity to the APRS network. |
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| DIGI-PEATERS - Too many can be a real problem! Unlike other forms of non-digital communications, it is generally understood, (baring adjacent frequency interference), that the more repeaters, the better. This is not true with APRS digital packet transmissions. If there are too many digi's or improperly placed digi's, the system can become unstable due to collisions of digital packets. Most digi-peaters are on 144.390. Because of this, packets can collide with others and get lost. Also, because of the "routing" feature within the packet structure, a station can soon run out of repeats before getting very far. This and improperly configured stations can provide more packets to become dropped resulting in no communication. Yes. A digi-peater is really easy to build but might be a challenge to actually configure properly so that packets are relayed efficiently and correctly. The purpose of the digi generally defines how it is setup. If it's purpose is to provide a relay over a large area, this becomes more challenging due to integration with other APRS stations and repeaters. If you just want to be "there" on the APRS maps, that's pretty simple. |
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Findu.com |
| W9PCi-3 | Messages for W9PCi |
| MTTOLO | Messages for MTTOLO |
| WB7SZM-13 | Messages for WB7SZM |
| K7MKG | Messages for K7MKG |
| KL7VK | Messages for KL7VK |
APRS MAPS |
As seen by W9PCi-3 Digi | APRS Nov 1, 2003- UI-View (Compliments of KD7iBG) |
| APRS Jan 6, 2002 | |
| APRS Jan 7, 2002 - USA Map showing HF-GATE | |
| APRS Jan 7, 2002 - NW Region Direct Links | |
| APRS Jan 7, 2002 - Local Area | |
| APRS Jan 28, 2002 - NW Region Direct Links | |
| APRS Jan 28, 2002 - World | |
| APRS Jan 28, 2002 - Western Hemisphere | What's up with this guy, driving out in the Pacific? |
