[aprssig] What sort of events have you been using APRS with?

[William McKeehan]

I've been involved in 3 events this year where APRS was really used.

We provided communications for the Knoxville Marathon and APRS was used in
that. I had a Kenwood TH-D7 on my motorcycle and one APRS display at the
Start/Finish line. I stayed with the lead runner until he crossed the finish
line at which point I went back and trailed the last runner. We had plans for
a couple of tracker boxes to help keep track of some shuttle buses, but we had
issues that made those inoperable. We did setup a temporary digi to support
this event.

The next event was a bicycle ride called the Tour de Blount. It was a 25, 50
and 62 mile ride in Blount County. Here we had several more stations -
everyone that we had mobile (5 SAG vehicles) in the field had APRS abilities
(interestingly, the Kenwood D7/D700 were the only trackers used) and we had a
station setup at Net Control using UI-View with a KPC 3+. At this event, we
had 3 event coordinators come talk to us about providing communications for
their event. They had heard what we were able to do with the motorcycle @ the
Knoxville Marathon and wanted that capability for their event.

Just this past weekend, we worked a very challenging Bicycle ride - the
Cherohala Challenge. It's a 115 mile ride with a climb up to 5477 feet. We had
all of our SAG vehicles setup with trackers (again, everyone was using Kenwood
D7/D700s), 2 temporary digi's and a few stations (a couple at rest stops and
another at Net Control) setup. It was a route that required 3 repeaters (1
temporary repeater that linked to an existing repeater) to cover the event, so
we were concerned about APRS coverage. We did a lot of pre-event route
analysis/testing and used that information to determine the location for our
temporary digi's. All-in-all, the APRS coverage turned out to be at least as
good as the voice coverage if not better.

In all 3 events, using APRS provided great benefits to those of us mobile as
well as to the event coordinators.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Do you guys have plans to use APRS for Rally TN this year? I worked that event
last year @ the net control station with Tony; you may remember me.

On Wed, June 21, 2006 9:53 pm, Anders Green said:
> I think it would be fun to have some talk about
> what folks are using APRS for. Oh, I know it _can_
> be used for all sorts of things, but I'd just
> like to hear some cool stories. :)
>
> We used APRS at our last car rally. This event
> is a full-out race, via closed roads, on sand/gravel
> roads. The cars range from relatively low dollar
> two wheel drive machines to $150,000 four wheel
> drive monsters. Here's a link to a picture gallery:
>
> http://sandblastrally.com/2006/media/KevinAllen-Pics/CooperBlackFourWay-SS1/
>
> We had APRS in the lead pre-race cars, and in
> the post race sweep cars. A single digipeater
> covered the area relatively well; there were
> some drop outs. Next year we'll add my D700
> to the mix, and probably another dedicated
> unit on one of the three lead cars, to get
> full coverage of resources.
>
> Cheers,
> Anders
>
>
>
>
>
> +==========================================================
> | Anders Green
> | ki4iwx
> +==========================================================
>
>
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-- 
William McKeehan
KI4HDU
Internet: mckeehan at mckeehan.homeip.net
http://mckeehan.homeip.net

Do not go where the path may lead,
go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
     - Ralph Waldo Emerson