[aprs-fl] Fill digipeaters in the area

[Tom Schaefer, NY4I]

Thanks Paul. Yes to your first two questions. Without a fill digipeater, I cannot use my D7A(G) even in the backyard with a long antenna. I also noticed over at the house in Dunedin and Treasure Island the coverage was not very good. I do not one has to be aware of just dropping a WIDE area digipeater, but as long as the fill digs can hear each other the effects of extra WIDE1-1 stations (old RELAYs) are minimal to channel congestion. The recommendation from Bob had always been the more RELAYS the better. I will check to see if that stands for WIDE1-1s.

Thanks also for referring me to Dave. I did see the coverage map on the APRSFL website. It is based on a 50 watt mobile which as I mentioned is not your typical tracker especially for event tracking and HTs. I also noticed the specs for an HT being 30-35% less.We have two vendors that make HTs for APRS (with a brand new one coming out just before CHristmas) and I fear in this area they are of limited use without either higher WIDE areas digs or more fill digipeaters.

Regards,

Tom NY4I
On Nov 5, 2010, at 1:36 PM, Paul Toth-NB9X wrote:

> Tom....
> 
> There are three digipeaters providing overlapping coverage in your part of
> Pinellas County:  W4ACS-11, KG4YZY-10 and NI4CE-12.  Given your distance
> from Riverview, NI4CE-12 will most likely serve as a second tier digi when
> YZY-10 and ACS-11 are functioning normally.
> 
> It seems to me the questions that need to be asked to justify any kind of
> "fill digi" for your area are:
>    - Distance from the nearest first tier Digipeater.  If you are at or
> outside the main coverage footprint of that digi, a WIDE1-1 "fill" digi is
> probably a good idea.
>     - Are there obstructions, foliage or other RF attenuators in your
> immediate area preventing your signals, particularly low power signals from
> being heard and repeated by the first tier digis?  If there are, then a
> WIDE1-1 may be justified.
>    - What impact is the operation of a "fill digi" in your area going to
> have on overall traffic and network congestion?  APRS is a flat network of
> repeaters.  Dropping a "fill digi" into an area could end up being
> self-defeating.
> 
> Dave-KG4YZY has done a lot of analysis and work on trying to optimize the
> APRS network in the TampaBay area.  If he does not respond to your posting
> here on the reflector, you might try dropping him a note at dave at aprsfl.net.
> 
> 73 de Paul-NB9X
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom Schaefer, NY4I" <ny4i at arrl.net>
> To: <aprs-fl at tapr.org>
> Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 12:51 PM
> Subject: [aprs-fl] Fill digipeaters in the area
> 
> 
> Greetings, I have been back int he area for a few years now and I have
> gotten back into APRS in the last 12 months. I noticed an absence of fill
> digipeaters in the area evidenced by the holes in the mobile coverage in the
> area. I wonder if this is a byproduct of the WIDEN change to go away from
> RELAY. It used to be that home stations would set their uidigi or at least
> MYALIAS to RELAY to help any mobiles. I typically run a path of
> WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in my mobile and while central arteries like US19 seem
> pretty well covered, we have holes on the perimeter at least in Pinellas.
> 
> So I am curious, is there any level of encouragement to have stations set up
> home digipeaters that are repeating WIDE1-1 only? A few of us up here in
> Palm Harbor have been working on fill digipeaters to help the area with low
> power mobiles and especially D7A and D72A stations (December at NY4I-7 for
> the latter anyway ). I also have some property in Dunedin close to the Gulf
> that I plan to place a WIDE1-1 fill digipeater.
> 
> I suspect many stations may think that the "high" wide digipeaters will
> provide ample coverage, but that is far from the case. A digipeater even 800
> feet above the ground does not cover low power trackers adequately.  I
> realize that Florida is height challenged. I started the expansion of the
> network in Utah and playing with digipeaters 5000 above ground level does
> tend to spoil one, but even there we depended upon fill digipeaters for
> trackers in mountain passes and within the downtown area due to building
> fade.
> 
> If anyone has any ideas on the matter or wants to proffer a plan we can work
> to find the dead spots (it does seem to be along the beaches in Pinellas
> County), I would be all ears and much action. I love setting up APRS
> networks as I think the better tracker network you have the more it is a
> boon to events like road races, etc for SAG wagon support. It also makes it
> much nicer to play with small APRS stations like HTs.
> 
> L:astly—and if you have read this far, thanks—is there a core group in the
> area that are the backbone of the APRS network. We had a Utah APRS User's
> Group that stayed in touch via email regularly especially to share who was
> putting a digipeater where in the state. I know this list exists, but I saw
> some recent messages that even questioned the reason to keep this SIG for
> lack of activity. I would live to know the right place to get into this
> discussion. I did see the APRSFL website but that seems geared to reporting
> on APRS stations and usage data versus network infrastructure topics.
> 
> Thanks for reading…
> 
> Tom Schaefer, NY4I
> 727-437-2771
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