[aprssig] Low band APRS (was Re: 9600b UHF APRS IS THE FUTURE OF APRS)

[Paul Zawada]

On 10/9/06, Joe Della Barba <joe at dellabarba.com> wrote:
> My pet peeve is that there is no 10 meter
> FM 1200 BPS packet frequency. For rural areas *that* is the ticket with
> plenty of surplus hi power "low band" commercial stuff available.

Does it have to be 10 meters?  10 meters can get crowded when the band
opens up.   It's bad enough that there's no "official" FM simplex
channel other than the calling channel.

How about 6 meters?  BNSF Railway is doing some pretty interesting
digital stuff with a company called Meteorcomm.  They are doing meteor
scatter communications on 44.58 MHz for monitoring hot box data and
enforcing "track and time" warrants for their GPS-equipped hy-rail
vehicles.  I think Bob has talked about the possibility of
meteor-scatter APRS in the past and now there's a similar commercial
application to prove it can be done reliably.

(See http://www.meteorcomm.com/wireless/hlcs.aspx for the BNSF application.)

Just a thought...  Of course, if you've been hoarding low band radios
for the lower bandsplit, you've got the wrong hardware and will need
to start hoarding upper bandsplit radios as well.

--zawada