[aprssig] smart beaconing for kenwoods!

[Wes Johnston]

I mean this in jest, but hey, it'd work! 

Get a pocket tracker from byonics.com and wire it up in your car to the
existing GPS that feeds your d700 radio (ie a Y connection on the GPS's
tx data line).  Use a dummy load for an antenna on your pocket tracker,
and set it's path to: <your callsign>, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1.  Turn on
digipeating on your d700.  Now, the only station can can hear your
pocket tracker is your kenwood d700, which has it's beacon function
turned off.  Make sure the d700 and the pocket tracker have the same
callsign.  Program the pocket tracker for smart beaconing.  When it
transmits, the kenwood will hear it, and digipeat the packet out with
50w.  Everyone will see that packet and think it came from your kenwood
d700.  If they need to message you, the kenwood will still handle that.

Another way (on a serious note), is to hook a basic stamp to your GPS in
similar fashion.  The basic stamp listens to your GPS data stream and
figures out when you have turned, then serially, tells the d700 to turn
beacon off and right back on.  This causes the kenwood to send a
position report right away.  The only problem with this method is that
if you happen to be entering a text message on the keypad and the basic
stamp tells the kenwood to beacon, it'll exit the message dialog w/o
saving it.  Basic stamp code for this is available at
http://www.kd4rdb.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=15

Wes