[aprssig] Fill-in Digis, routes in California

[Stephen H. Smith]

apratt at bestbits.org wrote:
> 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.
>
>   
Basically yes.   The urban areas and Interstates have more than  enough 
coverage to ensure two-hop coverage.  Leave those areas and you 
basically fall off the edge  of the earth.  There just aren't any 
digipeaters.   (There does seem to be fairly good coverage of the desert 
south-east from San Diego-area digipeaters and some on high peaks in 
western Arizona. )


You will find the same thing when you cross the Sierras on I-80, US-50 
or Rt 88.   You drive off the edge of the APRS world on the east slope 
of the Sierras until you reach I-15 in Utah.


The only thing that consistently works in these remote areas is 30-meter 
HF APRS that is capable of leaping over tall mountains and traveling 
500-1500 miles in a single hop. 






Stephen H. Smith    wa8lmf (at) aol.com
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