[aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight

[Scott Miller]

How about not doing conversions?  I've found pager suppliers who specify 
broad frequency ranges across several bands, including 2 meters.  I can 
inquire and find out how large an order would be needed to get a custom 
frequency.  (Too bad they're not likely to be easy to hack to work on AX.25)

I already know of one outfit that'd probably be able to do it for a 500 
unit minimum order.  That's a little more than I'd like to sink into 
such a project right away, though, unless they're really cheap.

Scott
N1VG

Dave Baxter wrote:
> I like that idea!
> 
> Not sure how easy/dificult the pager conversion is, but over hear, I
> think they use RF arround 175MHz, so not too far from 2m.   Can they be
> made to monitor more than one frequency?  Like, scan for a signal?
> 
> Finding a suitable frequency to use could be "interesting", we only have
> 2MHz to play with, and most of that is band-planed, what isn't has all
> sorts of "little private nets on", but only when you want to experiment
> do they come out of the noise and complain..  Nothing new there then by
> the sound of it!
> 
> There are also "still some issues" putting up new stuff on 70cms these
> days.
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> Dave G0WBX.
>  
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ben Jackson [mailto:bbj at innismir.net] 
>> Sent: 26 January 2009 13:48
>> To: bruninga at usna.edu; aprssig at tapr.org; bruninga at usna.edu; 
>> TAPR APRS Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight
>> 
>> 
>> 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
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
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