[aprssig] APRS at Field Day 2005

[Robert Bruninga]

Here is my report for APRS FIeld Day in the
Baltimore/Washington-DC/Annapolis area.  
One of the highest density APRS networks
in the country.  If your experience was different, 
we'd be intrested in your report.

BACKGROUND:  Under the ARRL rules, APRS 
could get 100 pts for a demo using a temporary 
digi and no assets that belong to the existing 
APRS infrastructure.  We sugggested a QSY
to 145.01 for these contacts and I set up
a temporary digi (a D700) at the office on .01.

We made 2 contacts.  A fixed station on a 
boat moored in Baltimore (22 mi), a mobile in
the mountains north of baltimore (50 mi) .
We also observed a BBS and one other 
fixed station on .01.

Expecting that few people would take the
trouble to QSY, we also maintainted a full
APRS situational display at Field Day site to 
watch everything else that was going on.
During the 24 hour FD period and with 
almost 300 RF stations on the map, we
only saw 5 stations with evidence of
human operators at the keyboard.  We
got msg exchanges from 3 of the 5.  Only
two seemed to be aware of FD or at a FD site.

OTHER FD SITES::  WIthin the range of the
2 contacts we did make (22 and 50 miles)
we estimate there were probably 20 to
30 or more other FD sites and clubs in the 
metro area. We know of 5 just within 10 mi.

CONLCUSION:  APRS is still showing a
penetration of only about 10% in most
areas and clubs and activitites.  Maybe
most of the APRS operators are not 
interested in operating out in the field
or are not interested in operating on
RF without internet access,  or wrongly 
view APRS as only a passive vehicle tracking 
system.

If you had significanly other results, we would
be interestred in hearing about them.

de Wb4APR, Bob