[aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight

[Ben Jackson]

On 1/26/2009, "Scott Miller" <scott at opentrac.org> wrote:

>Now THIS is something I find a little more interesting.  And I have the
>hardware to work on it, too - my service monitor does POCSAG, though all
>I've ever done with it is send test messages to an ancient, deactivated
>SAR pager from my junk box.
>
>It's also something that I could see having some commercial value, which
>is always nice when it comes to justifying R&D costs.
>
>What's out there for two-way pagers?  I've never had a chance to mess
>with them.  They're not nearly as widespread and cheap as the regular
>kind, but there have to be a bunch out there still.

Well, the two-way pagers from what I understand use the ReFLEX[1] or
Mobitex[2] protocols, not POCSAG. I have not seen anything regarding
these two protocols used in Amateur service. This would, however, bypass
any kind of sticky FCC regulation, provided the pager can ID itself
somehow.

The Motorola T900 series seems to follow Motorola's 900MHz bandplan (TX
on 896-902MHz, RX on 929-942 MHz) which bookends the 33cm band. In New
England, there is a group of Ham who repurpose old Motorola 2-way gear
to operate within the 33cm band[3]. I have not seen any work with pagers
though, and I bet that retuning the pagers isn't as easy as Radios.

~Ben

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFLEX
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobitex
[3] http://www.gemoto.com/