[aprssig] Fill-in Digis, routes in California

[apratt at bestbits.org]

Cap! Good to hear from you. We met at the ham show in Monterey earlier
this year. I asked you what route to use in northern CA and I got my
license by passing the test that day. 

Are you saying that there is no place in CA that is three hops from an
IGate? That is, you're either 1-2 hops away or out of luck completely?
Not in the cities - I'm talking remote areas: Trinity National Forest,
the North Coast, Lassen County, the Eastern Sierras, and the Desert
Southeast, from Ridgecrest and Death Valley to Borrego Springs.

My goal is to be tracked on findu as I travel in those remote areas.
The way I look at it, a great tragedy is to finally peek through the
terrain and hit a distant digi, only to have my packet die of hop
count death before it reaches an IGate. That's why I contemplate
running a 3-hop path on those trips.

Bob's New n-N paradigm page at
http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs/fix14439.html has a California
map (http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs/ca-hops.jpg) which is ten
years old. It shows three-hop areas between 101 and Highway 1 out to
Bodega Bay, and also in Yreka and even along I5 south of Redding.
There are vast empty areas too. No idea what the true situation is
now, ten years later.

On the other hand, it sounds like you're saying that a three-hop path
will be trapped in urban areas where one hop is enough. Does the TRAP
logic mean it won't be digipeated at all? Or does it mean it'll repeat
once, and therefore hit an IGate?

If your trapping causes my rude 3-hop packet to be repeated just once
in urban areas, that sounds perfect to me: it means I'm not being all
that rude after all. I could run 3 hops all day knowing I'd really get
3 hops where I needed it, but I would get 1 hop in the cities where
one is enough.

Is that how California works? Would be sweet if true, for my intended
application. Thanks.

-- Allan Pratt, apratt at bestbits.org