[aprssig] Weather Stations and Net Neutrality

[Robert Bruninga]

>> It was never worth it.  Positionless weather 
>> saves one packet per hour but at the expense 
>> of unreliable delivery, and delays and latency.  
>> Miss one weatherless-postion packet and the 
>> next almost two hours and a dozen positionless-
>> weather packets are useless to the newcomer, 
>> the mobile, the person who just activated for 
>> a storm, etc.
> 
> Please once and for all, explain to me why this 
> is ANY different than positionless messgaes and 
> positionless status, 

Because Weather without position is meaningless.  Whereas
Messages and most Status's  usually have meaning that is mostly
independent of position.

> and  positionless telemetry, which requires up 
> to FOUR separate packets (position, parameters, 
> bits and data) to be fully useful, and is also 
> your creation. 

Yes, I agree telemetry is an exception that does require
additional apriori information for full meaning.  But it is
several orders of magnitude less significant on APRS than
weather which everyone uses, not 0.1% that use telemetry.  And
you helped solve the parameter packet issue with FINDU by
cleverly allowing the parameters to be included in the URL.

> Worse, the telemetry bits and parameters can be 
> sent from different stations!

Yes, this allows a ground station to send the parameter
definitions for the balloon for example.  This saves power on
the balloon and allows them to be changed on the fly as needed
without having to recover the telemetry device and reprogram it
if the parameter coeficients need to be updated.  These
parameters use the message format, so that the parameters
one-for-one match the callsign of the telemetry device no matter
who transmits them.  Again, this lets the ground station with a
different call to update everyone with new coeficients for the
telemetry station which is usually unmanned.

> I bet you cannot explain this. I've never heard 
> ANY explanation from  you about it. Prove me wrong! 
> Say something new, not just the same old  
> unsubstantiated claims against positionless weather. 
> Tell me exactly how weather is different than 
> telemetry, status, and messages!

When I am driving down the road, and have a black cloud ahead, I
want to look at my APRS radio for the nearest WX station ahead
of me and see what is going on.  In the mobile environment with
positionless weather being reported, it might be one to two
hours before my radio can integrate the positionless-weather
being reported every 10 minutes to the weatherless-position
report that only comes out once an hour.  In the meantime, I am
wet and mad at having an APRS system that is delivering useless
weather packets that I have no idea where they are coming from.
It is very rare to be in range of a fixed weather station for an
hour or more while mobile.  Hence, most weather data is useless
to most traveling mobiles.  And if we are not serving the
traveling APRS mobile, then we don't need APRS since all the
internet junkies can get all they want from WX.COM.

When I see a WX packet come across my mobile screen, I want to
see where that weather condition is.  Not have to see up to 5 or
more of them over 1 to two hours before a position finally comes
in. The weather is being sent every 10 minutes, there is no
reason it should not contain the position where that weather was
happening.  And weather is something we all use and want to
monitor.  Telemetry is a much more individual and extremely
rarely used function of APRS.  Messages and status are rarely
position dependent.

Hope that helps.

Bob, Wb4APR



> >
> 
> Steve K4HG
> 
> 
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