[aprssig] Road Trip - Lessons Learned

[Joel Maslak]

On Mar 18, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Scott Miller wrote:

>> I did 1 minute beacons for the "dumb" vehicle.  I am not sorry about
>> that at all.  Even one minute at 70 MPH is quite some distance.
>
> This is an application where Bob's proportional pathing scheme  
> would be
> good.  You can get rapid updates direct, and occasional WIDE  
> beacons for
> longer range.


Yes, I thought the same thing.  Unfortunately Kenwood doesn't let you  
do that.  Too bad they don't give a good interface to the radio/TNC  
when the thing is in APRS mode, as this would be the sort of thing  
that is trivial if there was an interface (it would also be trivial  
to extract waypoints properly into some of the proprietary formats  
such as Garmin).


>> We also used FRS between the vehicles.  That didn't work nearly as
>> well - after more than 1/4 mile or so at the most, we lost
>> communication that way.
>
> FRS has always disappointed me for vehicle to vehicle  
> communications.  It
> can't compete even with a 5-watt 2-meter HT with a cheap 1/4 wave  
> magmount.


Agreed, but for $7 and no license, you can't really beat it right now  
(I got the radios out of a bargain bin at Wal-Mart - they are  
garbage, but I don't care if the unlicensed user runs one over with  
their car either).  But yes I would have had second thoughts if I  
didn't also have a cell phone!