[aprssig] CQ FD shame on you

[Stan Leeds]

Bob and All,

I'm afraid I am not sure about the overall statistics of Field Day this 
year.  The setup I have ran for the past three years turned a deaf ear 
on me and I could not get constant receive.  No matter the tweaking, it 
would just work spotty including getting messages from my D710 in the 
parking lot.

But what I was able to receive interested enough of the club's group 
members including our county emergency management official as I demo'd.

While I took my turn for my annual HF contacts, I had a couple of the 
other folks playing/working with the APRS, so I was able to "man" the 
station most of the time.  About 10pm local I closed it down and used 
the radio to talk some 2M simplex.

I did send out a CQ FD via CQSRVR, but unfortunately I could not hear 
anyone that did reply, until after when I surfed over to FINDU.com and 
looked at my messages (W8BI-2), there was about 10 returns/replies stored.

So there are folks trying, just stumbling along the way.

Thanks to all and sorry we missed you. Hope to hear ya all next year!

Stan/KC7EHJ


Bob Bruninga wrote:
> Well, 25,000 APRS operators in the USA, and I saw a total of FOUR (4) sending out CQ FD (via the CQSRVR).  I made only a dozen field day contacts out of 12 hours operating.
> 
> This is the worst APRS performance at Field Day I have ever seen.  Im surrounded by trackers, WX stations, and houses with the lights on and nobody home.
> 
> My count of 4 comes from the CQSRVR that responds to your login by saying how many other CQ FD stations it forwared your message to.  In my case... 4!  In the entire country, only 4 stations were attempting to make CQ FD contacts using the system designed to make it happen.
> 
> And since one remains automitically subscribed for 12 hours or more after sending only one CQ message, it would seem to me that that was pretty much it.
> 
> FOrtunately a few people were out driving around with TWO-WAY APRS and I was able to get some 8 other LIVE HUMAN messages.
> 
> Even if you were not participating in field day, I'm sure you were out driving around sometime over the weekend...  couldnt you at least LOOK at your mobile radio screen and see any FD stations and simply hit MSG button to give someone a contact?  Is it asking to much?
> 
> Of course, only 10% of APRS users are on this sig, but all it takes is ONE PERSON per METRO area to have sent a CQ, and then that station would have gotten ALL THE OTHER CQS from all the other areas.  Then ANYONE in that metro area could have seen all those responses, and even if he did not know how CQSRVR works, he would STILL have seen all the callsigns and could have joined in with messages...
> 
> Sheesh...
> Bob, WB4APR
> 
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