Amateur (Ham) Radio BS and Callsign Thread!

Glad to hear that everything is working.

I like smart beaconing when I can adjust the settings, when to beacon based speed or directions change.

There are APRS nazis out there that will go crazy if you beacon one to many times by their standards.

 

If you are just tracking each other, can't you set it to low power and beacon as fast as you want. Also setting it to zero hops so it won't get forwarded if it happens to make it to an igate. That should allow you to only reach each other. I have used this before, works decent.

Don't ask me the settings, I don't remember them right now. sorry.

 

Smart beaconing is really great. It's very well designed and it's adjustable as well, depending on the device doing it. You can beacon as much as you want. Nobody is going to come after you. I laughed at a guy who beacons every 13 seconds driving on the interstate here in San Diego.

 

The problem with beaconing as much as smart beaconing usually does is that it can prevent others from being received. As far as I know stations usually decode one at a time and don't store any packets received simultaneously, meaning that one packet won't be decoded if two come in simultaneously.

Case in point, I didn't receive a beacon packet from a friend a stone's throw away because I got another packet at the same time. Another time I didn't receive a message at first because of other simultaneous packets, even though the message showed up on aprs.fi and I was in easy range of a digipeater.

When you send out a packet every 15 seconds you can unnecessarily prevent a lot of other traffic from going through the digipeaters and igates. I say unnecessarily because unless you're traveling hundreds of miles per hour, a few seconds of travel won't change your position to a place that you will no longer be found in a safety situation.

I beacon once every 4 minutes and have never had a problem. If a friend and I need to find each other we just manually beacon locations and we're fine.

 

Yup and that is why Smart Beaconing is always preferred. I use a hardware TNC from Argent Data systems and it even has a setting that won't allow the radio to TX if the air isn't clear.

 

Just gotta make sure that your smart beaconing settings accommodate other users and the limitations of the equipment if you don't have a TNC that prohibits your radio from transmitting until the air is clear.

 

Two closest stations beaconing like crazy. Rofl.

 

Jesus... There's a reason for the aprs.fi notification: "This station is transmitting packets at a very high rate, which causes serious congestion in the APRS network. This could be considered an abuse of the network resources."

 

Have you considered something more reliable like a satellite device, like Spot Trace? For as much as you go off-road, it would seem like a easy choice.

Give yourself a break. Hams getting upset at other hams for too much packet communications is cause for laughter. Don't worry about it.

 

If you're just using it amongst yourselves and are within range you can use an alternative frequency

Ahh.. OK then that would not work so well for you....

 

Roger that @m3bassman.

 

Sure, you would think that the defaults would be appropriate, but like you're saying, it definitely is location-dependent and I don't remember if the default APRSDroid Smart Beaconing settings were very accommodating to other traffic. Once per minute, as you were saying, is fine I'm sure, I wasn't going after you, but I thought that the default settings went way more frequently than that, hence my hesitation at suggesting the use of smart beaconing for those that don't change from the default.

Do you not have any traffic on the digipeater? The digi will re-transmit your packet to everyone, so it's not just those stations within range of your personal station that could be impacted by you, it's also every station within range of that digi. I just recommend keeping an eye on the amount of traffic as you move around and adjust settings as needed.

Not gonna lie, I chuckled at the people filling up my receiver with beacons, but it's no longer a laughing matter when your emergency packet in spotty aprs coverage can't get through because of some operator hundreds of miles away that is tying up the only digipeater that you can reach and you don't have another gps beaconing device.

Side note...I highly recommend moving away from aprsdroid. I still use it if I just want to use my android phone because it's simple and easy enough, but it's always a much better experience for me using aprsisce on windows.

 

But you have run Windows for that... no way in hell I'll ever run Windows outside of a corporate or gaming PC environment.

 

I thought your issues weren't APRSdroid? I have the OSM version working flawlessly...

 

That's crazy compared to the traffic in my area! http://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=11&lat=32.7944&lng=-117.0582&timerange=3600&tail=3600

I think there are other APRS softwares for other systems. Having not researched programs other than those for windows and android I can't say for sure, but I gotta believe there are better and more customizable options than APRSDroid for other systems, too.

 

Not in a mobile platform and APRS is pretty useless unless you're mobile...

Xastir is the most powerful APRS program around and I've used it a bunch for fun and testing. Even setup a digipeater with it but unless you want to run a laptop in your truck it's not a real option.

http://xastir.org/index.php/Main_Page

 

Where did you get your maps? I have the entire US and all the states if you want to try one of mine.

 

Haha, there are some areas with more APRS traffic near you, depending on which digi you hit!

 

Guys I'm getting a constant beep when listening to the local NOAA repeater. Why is it beeping?

Edit: Beep was gone when listening today


Was also wondering what antenna I should get to mount on my tuck that i could use with my Baofeng but also be good for a mobile unit when I get one. Was thinking either to mount at end of bed ( next to tailgate) or on the toolbox. Which offers the best ground plane?

 

Where did everyone go? lol