[aprssig] The path subject again

[Dennis Hudson]

What makes Mass/RI/CT/ME different from the rest of the heavily 
populated areas in the country? Other Metro areas in Texas, California, 
Florida recommend SINGLE WIDEs as a path. RELAY,WIDE3-3 appears to be a 
growing epidemic on the Eastern Seaboard, 4 Hops in all directions? 
That's 36 potential packets, 30 seconds of airtime per transmit cycle. 
Why does anyone is Western NY, VT, Quebec, NYC,NJ care about a station 
in Maine or Boston? How can this be good for the network?

We have worked very hard to get home stations to run "DIRECTED",WIDE or 
RELAY,WIDE for mobiles in upstate NY, only to have stations 150+ miles 
away flood our local network? Trips to mountains to adjust digipeaters 
so they are only IDing direct, constant user education, emails, 
letters, training sessions, no it's not easy.

It appears to be a simple game of, "if the guy next to me is running 
RELAY,WIDE3-3, why can't I?" It seems every month we rehash this and 
everyone appears to be in agreement. I write emails to individuals and 
they reply positively but never make changes to their station. If a 
group suggests shorter paths and starts using it, maybe others will 
follow? Does this apply to you? Bob B has suggested ways of computing 
your aloha circle, Findu is a start, APRS DOS now gives that circle on 
your screen.

If everybody would knock it down to DIRECTED,WIDE or WIDE2-2 we would 
have room for more traffic and things will work much better for us on 
our local network. 8 of our top 10 users are not locals, and are far 
outside our aloha circle.

I'm sorry if this is offensive to anyone and it's a shame we have to 
keep bringing it up, but if we don't fix it now it will just get worse. 
It's an unfair distribution of the network, and is preventing us from 
using our own resources. Please, take it down a notch (or 2 or 3).

--
Dennis Hudson, N2LBT
Sysop APRSALY
http://n2lbt.com:14501
Albany, NY