[aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight

[Ben Jackson]

On 1/24/2009, "Robert Bruninga" <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:

>What we really need is someone to take on the simple task of a
>PIC converter to convert APRS messages to DTMF PAGING text
>messages so that those dozens of THOUSANDS of existing amateur
>radio DTMF paging HT's can be used to receive and send APRS
>messages.

Bob, while the number of FT-51s and TH-78s might outnumber THD7s, I think
the question that needs to be asked is are the owners interested in such
a service? Instead of focusing on older HTs that people may or may not
have. Has anyone ever looked at a APRS -> POCSAG[1] Gateway?

Older, working pagers are a dime a dozen on the used market and there are
some people who have refitted them to work on Amateur bands[2]. With the
fact that there (quite literally) buckets full of working pagers at
HamFests, why not have a "messagegate" that takes APRS messages to
stations and translates them to a message destined for a POCSAG
compatible pager. There were certain KAM TNCs that could encode POCSAG
natively

Comments? Laughter? Rotten tomatoes? :)

~Ben

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POCSAG
[2] http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/pager/plan.html