Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

You can get APRS messaging confirmations with SMSGTE text messages...

I thought you could as well with regular APRS --- ie APRS to APRS --- messages as well... but I havent done that before... havent had any other APRS contacts other then messaging my wife via her phone and SMS text messages

Here's some shots of my messages with her...

The at camp message is saved in the radio so it's only a couple clicks to send it

 

Yeah, but this is kind of useless to me when the intended recipient and the sender both have no reception and are in an area with no digipeaters or an area without enough people linking the sender to the recipient or to a digipeater.

A good example, Baja California.

 

Thank you

 

The other thing I can recommend is going to and HRO to phycislly touch the radios

If your ever in the Boston area and want to check my setup up just let me know

 

I can understand that ..

I haven't used aprs droid much

But I believe I can set a "ringer" for direct to me aprs messsges

 

I'll tell you what works though.

We have had great success with the Garmin inReach (based on the Iridium network). When we were traveling through Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona for the Eclipse + wheeling last August both that and Iridium/Motorola 9500 worked amazing.

We had just gotten into Colorado and we had spotty reception all the way into camp. One of our guys let us know that he got a text saying that his wife had been in a car accident. We were about 30 minutes from camp before he decided to let us know. This was with him mulling over whether or not to backtrack because he had already been trying to call/text her for 30 minutes with multiple call failures, choppy voice on successes, and sms failures. And we discussed it for 15 minutes while driving before deciding to just get the rest of the way to camp while there was still light and whip out the Iridium.

I spent $125 bucks on 75 minute prepaid sim, and that was the only call we made on that phone the entire trip.. at some random Colorado lake surrounded by 150 cows who kept licking our trucks and wouldn't shutup the entire night.

His wife was safe, it was a minor scrape, everyone slept well despite the severely burnt jiffy pop.

 

This is proof that as great as HAM radio is... its not the end all be all of communication.

My last trip to the Green Mountains of Vermont I spent three night camping. No cell service all three nights. The first night I was easily able to send out an APRS SMS message to my wife and get a delivered response and her responding text messages... The second night I tried 5 times to get the message out with no response.... The third night I had to send it 3 times before I got a received response, but I didnt get her text responses. Once I got home I found out that she did get my APRS message the second night... but I didnt know that.

 

Yeah, similarly, we operate on a similar approach to information security, a layered approach. Like an onion. lol.


Cell Service First, Ham Radio Second, Sat Com last.

The Hail Mary setup would be sending up our DJI Phantom drone with a (V+V/U+U/V+U) equipped HT for xband repeat. Hopefully at 1,000 feet and no wind, we would be able to clear any obstacles. In a real pickle we'd have to consider running a ducted fan RC plane instead to get some more altitude/increased loiter or a more heavy duty custom hexa or octacopter.

 

I visited my local HRO store when I was deciding between the 400DR and the D710. Its how I decided on the D710 over the 400DR. I felt that I wouldnt be able to get the brightness of the 400DR down low enough to where it wouldnt be to bright when driving at night, also seemed that it would have glare of the screen in direct sun light. I also didnt like how the buttons were oriented. I ended up ordering the D710 from Amazon from an out of state vendor so I wouldnt have to pay sales tax..

 

Was it a pain to add aliases to smgte?

 

That's brilliant. Now I want to try it.

 

Wasnt too bad. Just follow the prompts on the aprssmt website, and was totally worth it

 

You can message directly between APRS radios. On the D710 just type @callsign then your message.

edit...I guess there’s a user named callsign who last signed on in 2008.

 

APRSdroid tracks pretty well with just a cheap Chinese HT...

 

The Holy Fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest in Orange County, Ca. Is danger close to all of the local repeaters situated on top of Santiago Peak..

 

yea, we experienced that when the santa cruz mountains went up in flames near loma prieta. our repeaters stayed online with a combination of generators and battery backups. none of the ham equipment was damaged, but the generator was in pretty rough shape when it was safe for inspection. Clearing a defensible space in terms of weed abatement is super important to keep those services online despite fires rolling past.

 

Anyone have a Mobilelinkd tnc on a Kenwood TM V71a?

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/search/6614108/?q=mobilinkd+v71&t=post&o=date&c[thread]=260643

 

I have the cable, but have yet to try it on that radio.

 

I've been using the Mobilinkd TNC for a while, But the last few months I've noticed the location on the APRS.FI map is less accurate and fewer of my smart-beacons are showing up too. It makes the Route I am driving look a little wonky. I've noticed this on local commutes and while traveling. I'm starting to wonder if the GPS from my Samsung S8 is not communicating too well with the app or if there is something else causing this behavior.
When I look at Google maps, my location is spot on.