[aprssig] Hiking with APRS at low risk

[Robert Bruninga]

> With a tracker they can find the body -- 
> with a D7 you can see how far it is to 
> nearest coffee shop..   I'll go with the D7.

Everyone should not forget APRS Vicinity tracking either.  With
a simple  tracker device and NO GPS, the 6 month appalachain
tracker can be tracked the entire way with a single tiny 9v
battery.

All he does is pull it out once a day, send out a few 1 second
BEACONS (not posits) and then turn it off and put it away.  APRS
should then plot his location by the "vicinity" of the nearest
digi.  This works much better these days then it did back in the
earlly 90's when most digis did not do callsign insertion.  Now
ALL digis under the New-N paradigm have fully traceable paths.
So you can track someone to the nearest 30 miles or so by their
Vicinity track. 

FINDU has a vicinty track CGI for plotting the location of the
stations FIRST digi...  In other words, progrm the tracker with
a BEACON TEXT that consists of an APRS "status" format.  That
is, simply begin the text with the ">" symbol, and it becomes an
APRS status.

Then FINDU ill display a VICINITY posit on that packet.

Bob, WB4APR