Posted: 3/29/2008 2:38:05 PM EDT
| Anyone involved with APRS? What is involved and would you share any photos of your setup? |
I've been thinking of adding a TinyTrak 4 and a small 2M transmitter to the truck. But then again, do I really want people knowing where I am?  However, if things work out as I hope I'll be coming into a Davis weather station. If it happens I'll definitely put APRS on it. |
mines not near as cool as that. just receive right now... and thats my only radio. no GPS even, just got my coords from google earth. i had it running for 20 minutes before this pic and had about 23 stations showing up. for some reason after about 40 minutes the soundmodem stuff quits working and doesnt decode packets anymore and i have to restart the computer to get it working again. more work to be done! how come there is no other packet stuff anymore? guess i need to hurry up and get an HF rig so i can have some psk fun or something.  |
Byon is a member of our local club. We recently did a build party and I built a Tiny Track 3+. I put it on the air using a Yaesu VX3 HT, a 1/4 wave mag mount antenna, and the TT3+. Worked fine around the Las Vegas area. I also bought the little 8 watt transmitter/TT3 combo but never actually hooked it up and tired it. http://byonics.com/ After I tried it and confirmed that it worked, I unhooked it and have never used it again. I don't see any point in my using it as I commute around town. Our club does a lot of public service events where APRS comes in very handy. |
That's cool. That combo is what I was talking about. I don't want to tie up one of my other radios and 8W should be enough for around town.
That's pretty much my concern. I don't want to tie up the cash in something that'll be seldom used when it could go to something I'll get more use out of.
What type of events do you use APRS for? If we're doing a run, triathlon, etc. we know what mile markers everyone is at. I can see it being helpful if we're doing a disaster assessment with the Red Cross but outside of that not so much. |
| I don't have pics right now due to the overtime the last two days. I have a tiny trak 4 that I use mobile. I love it. I use it with the gps that Byon sells on his site. It is paired with my FT-50R. It works great. I am going to get another one to set up when Byon gets the firmware out for digipeating. I also have a tt3 and a weather trak. Honestly the tiny trak is the easiest way to get started. I am going to pick up a Kenwood TMD710 at Dayton this year. Dad has the TMD700 and its a great radio if you want one setup and don't want to deal with extra radios and the such. Yes some people don't like the idea of people tracking you but it really does not matter to me. |
Awesome! Do you have the Linux or the Windoze version? And is the 8GB version out yet...? |
there is no windows version. you can install windows if you so desire. it comes installed with a custom version of xandros linux. i myself tried switching over to slackware linux, and a friend of mine tried switching his eee to windows, and we both ended up going back to the default linux install. it just works. and works alot better then anything else. although i have made changes like getting rid of the unionFS and building a new kernel with ax.25 support and such. |
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"What type of events do you use APRS for? If we're doing a run, triathlon, etc. we know what mile markers everyone is at. I can see it being helpful if we're doing a disaster assessment with the Red Cross but outside of that not so much." I am not real involved in the club due to work, although I have been lately because I was injured and couldn't work my regular schedule. Therefore I am going to combine what I have been told with some guesses on my part. At various events they equip emergency vehicles with APRS. With APRS you don't need a ham on board to see where the ambulances or whatever are located. I did an event a few weeks ago that was a road rally, through the desert. Each course (there were three) was through mountain terrain and ran a couple miles in length. The cars are started at like one minute intervals and are timed rather than racing head to head. They drive as fast as they can through the course which consists of a rough dirt road through the desert. If one of those cars wrecks or becomes disabled in the road, the next car is coming right behind them, so it is important to track the progress of each car. Hams are stationed all along the route and can't see each other. You can use APRS to track the cars, see where the hams along the route are located, the start and finish line along with the location of the racers to the start and finish line, as well as the command post/race officals/net control. Where the hams are located is not known prior to the race: the hams simply drive down the road in their own 4wd vehicles and find a vantage point that they think will accomplish the mission. Another race my club does is called the Baker to Vegas race. http://www.bakervegas.com/mapscharts.php It is a 120 mile, relay, foot race from Baker California to Las Vegas by Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs are the runners). The course goes through some very remote desert near Death Valley. Obviously the checkpoints, chase vehicles, emergency vehicles, hams, runners, etc. Are VERY spread out and APRS would be perfect for tracking any of the above. These are just a couple events done by my local club where APRS would be a huge asset. We do a lot of public service type activities of all kinds: car races, foot races, etc. Having little portable APRS setups like the Tiny Track, small HT, battery, mag mount antenna that you can put on non-ham vehicles is a great idea. |
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I tinker with it sometimes. Mostly using the APRS client built in to my Kenwood TM-D700A. I ran UIView on a drive from Texas to Connecticut, but really needed Precision Mapping to get some usefulness out of it. Unfortunately, there are no good Windows clients for it. As I understand it, the source code to UIView was destroyed when the author passed away.  I wish I had the time to work on something myself. Meanwhile, I lust for an AvMap G5. My best APRS experiences were using it to make contacts off the International Space Station. |
ASUS Officially Launches Eee PC with Microsoft Windows Operating System  Of course, that's dated March 5, 2008--although they've been talking it up since day one. I figured Windows might be preferred, as not all software I might want to use--i.e., radio programming--may be available on Linux. [/hijack] |
| UiView updates may have been killed off but it is awesome software. Its free, fairly easy to use and with precision mapping a very very good APRS client. Not to mention the plugins you can put with the software like NWS get that overlays an NWS weather map over your display. |