[aprssig] APRS experiment along I-40, mapping vs. voice alert vs. local info

[Kurt Kochendarfer]

>Ah, there is a problem.  At a combined speed of over 2 miles a
>minute, you only have one chance every 6 miles to even be heard
>by someone else.  And the simplex range mobile-to-mobile is
>usually less than that.

To me, this is the exact problem with Voice Alert.  If I am traveling in
the same direction as another station on VA, it works great (as long as
that station is traveling the same speed as me, and the planets align
and we happen to be within 5 miles of each other.)

If I'm traveling opposite direction from someone else, my window to talk
to another mobile operator is so small with VA that it's seldom worth
the trouble.  Who wants to drive down the interstate and have a 20
second QSO, just to prove that you can?  When I'm mobile, I want to talk
to folks to get things like traffic info, road conditions, weather
reports, or ragchew to keep myself awake.  The conversations I want to
have when I'm mobile are much longer than simplex range of two passing
stations on an interstate highway.

As such, I find that encoding whatever voice repeater you're monitoring
into your packet is a much more useful device for facilitating contacts
on the road. I have a D710 in the truck, so the TUNE function comes in
handy (however, I wish that with the D710 it automatically encoded not
only your B-band frequency into Status 5, but also any offset and tone
coding that you had set, so you didn't have to code that manually each
time you changed your B-band to another repeater.)

Kurt
KE7KUS