[aprssig] Airborne APRS

[Robert Bruninga]

>But why get complicated?  Write down the 
>lat/lon and then turn the D7 to a voice freq 
>and *tell* the ground crew where the balloon is...
>This is not something that will be used every day, 
>or even every week.

Actually, a good digipeater should be in flight
ready status in ANY airplane even remotely
associated with HAM radio or Search and
Rescue.  Every aircraft that gets involved
in SAR should have a digi (listening on 144.99
and digipeating on 144.39) so that the little
pocket-trackers in the shirt pockets of the
SAR teams can be easily tracked.

By letting them have their own uplink on 144.99
using their less than 1W transmitters, they
can easily be tracked without having to compete
with the wall-to-wall QRM on 144.39 at altitude.

So, making the effort to assemble a package that
can be easily transported into any plane with 
a winddow mounted antenna would be a very good
investment for many APRS support evolutions.

Just a thought...

de Wb4APR, Bob