[aprssig] APRS on Field Day 2007

[Robert Bruninga]

> Why do it on 144.39?  The spirit of FD is 
> emergency comms, so why not QSY and pretend 
> that all the tall digipeaters were taken out 
> by a disaster?.... 

Exactly my plan for the last 10 years.  But in the highest
density APRS network in the world (Wash DC/Baltimore area) the
number of active live human operators at FD sites that I ever
contacted I could count on one hand. (That's with over 100 clubs
in VHF range)...

At least in this area, APRS is lights on, nobody home, trackers
blindly transmitting, D700 operators driving around never
reading their messages or clearing their buffers, (me
included)...  Most people with Voice Alert off, because a
live-aboard boat in downtown baltimore leaves his D700 on voice
alert 24/7 and drives everyone off for over 100 square miles...

Same in Washington DC.  Someone leaves their radio on voice
alert-nobody-home 24/7 so you just have to turn it off.  

Most of the home stations are running Uiview with no PHG data,
so you cannot plot their antenna coverage areas and therefore
you cannot easily visualize house-to-house paths through the
non-digi network.

Over the same 10 years, I have never seen anyone in this area
put up a temp digi for FD, or do anything other than park their
D700 at FD, and make a contact from their FD portable to their
car, claim 100 points and then shut down.

Hence, I give up trying to get people to actually communicate
via RF live as humans, using temporary paths and temporary
digis.  The alternative is to let APRS continue to be the
"side-show" with no real application as perceived by the FD
contesters except bagging those 100 points and once a year
tracking trackers at special events, and go home...

Sorry to sound pessimestic.  I hope it is better in other areas.
I have see some live humans at FD sites in NJ and VA..

> On 6/7/07, Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote: 
> 
> 	4) APRS will be operated on 144.39 in the USA as a
demonstration
> 	station on RF ONLY. 100 demo Points will be awarded for
an 
> 	operating APRS station that can capture at least 20
surrounding
> 	APRS network participants and can exchange a two
way-message
> 	with at least three other manned stations.
> 	
> 	Here is the 2007 APRS field day WEB page: 
> 	
> 	http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/aprs/fd2006.html
> 	
> 	Notice that ALL Kenwood D700 mobiles should be activated
as
> 	TEMPn-N digipeaters.  This will make a nice way to link
into 
> 	144.39 if needed and to see what we can do with this
"permanent"
> 	TEMPn-n alternate network capability...
> 	
> 	Did I miss anything?
> 	Bob, WB4APR
> 	
> 	
> 	_______________________________________________ 
> 	aprssig mailing list
> 	aprssig at lists.tapr.org
> 	https://lists.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig 
> 	
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. 
>