[aprssig] Re: increasing WideX-X

[Chris Kantarjiev]

Bob, Cap,


> > It's possible to get a tracker signal into findu from 
> >Oakhurst, but the path needs to be at least WIDE3-3, [or] more.
> >It's abundantly clear that this isn't what APRS was designed
> >for. 
> 
> I disagree.  It is EXACTLY what APRS was designed for.
> I cant think of a better application...   Let me explain, if I 
> may to everyone listening...

But Bob ... I don't understand how to resolve this comment
with your railing against QRM caused by long digipaths ... 

The problem in that area is not congestion - I hear only a couple
of stations and one or two beacons/minute. As far as I can tell,
I'm one of a very few people, if not the only, interested in using
APRS at the north end of 41. Or east of Bass Lake. (Or in the Eastern
Sierra - the 395 corridor looks completely devoid of digis, but I
don't get over there more than twice a year.) None of the Oakhurst
club members that I've talked to have been interested.

As you said, the problem is not enough digis that are around to
listen for a first hop - that is, it's hard to get up from the
valleys to the ridge top digis.  And once you do, I think it's still
hard to get to an igate.

I haven't tried to run a tracker in the area for about a month, so
I wasn't aware that the Glacier Point digi had finally come on line
(hmm, findu makes it look as if there are four versions of K6IXA
up there! :-) That should help folks in the Park a lot - which is
what it was meant to do - but I suspect that my area of interest,
north and east of Oakhurst aka Southern Yosemite, won't see a lot
of benefit.

> And there's a KF6HJO IGate in Selma, at the foot of Highway 41.  The problem
> in those mountains is hitting the _first_ relaying station from behind a
> hill or down in a canyon.  Once you get _anywhere_, you're close to an
> IGate.  Some of these steep canyons are the few remaining places in the
> Western US where a digipath of RELAY,WIDE is still better than only WIDE2-2.
> Certainly, anything broader than _only_ WIDE2-2 or TRACE2-2 is still not
> needed to be seen on the internet. 

Cap, you're welcome to visit my cabin with your tracker any weekend 
I'm there. We can drive around the area and see just where it's possible to
get through or not. Let me say that I remain unconvinced, but I'm
more than willing to be proven wrong!

I'd be happy to help put up more digis in the area; I will shortly 
have some spare gear that I can donate. I don't have the right
contacts to make it happen - but I suspect that others do. (I
think it would be awesome to get a WIDEN-n digi on Deadwood
at the south end of Oakhurst. And at Cold Spring Summit or the Shuteye
fire lookout.)

Perhaps we should move this to the CA APRS list instead.

73 de chris KG6VYD