[aprssig] VX8GR

[Jaye Inabnit ke6sls]

On Monday 26 July 2010 18:00:42 Tom Kinahan wrote:
>   Some questions:
>
> 1) The GPS seems to take about 15-20 minutes to lock in clear sky.  Does
> anyone else see this, or have any suggestions to speed it up?
> 2) Has anyone bought the serial cable (or made one, I think it's straight
> RS232) to access the device? Is there a way to access the TNC only for
> other modes like Winlink (doing KISS)?

Hi Tom:

Congrats on the HT--I'm going to sell mine as soon as there is another model 
to replace it--lots of bugs and the manual omits much information that is 
needed to use the rig.

I had same issue.  I turned off the GPS power in the APRS menu (if this is 
unknown to you, please let me know and I'll explain further), charged the 
until to full charge, then went outside and turned on the unit, then turned 
on the GPS in the APRS menu--took about 10-15 seconds to lock onto satilites 
at that point.  I've had some luck getting it to lock on inside too, but 
structures are your enemy.  I also replaced the stock battery with the larger 
battery (gives about 12 hours use this way).

I haven't messed with the serial cable yet.  I was sort of surprised you can't 
use it in standard packet mode--so you will have to test and report back.

Further, I used this rig, living in one of my saddle bags, on a USA wide 
motorcycle trip.  I added 12VDC outlet to the bag and then used the DC power 
cable which also will charge the battery.  This worked well.  I added a 5/8~ 
whip and a 3' TNC-to-UHF adapter cable to feed the antenna.  Each night, I 
would check my progress on APRS-IS and was mostly pleased at the excellent 
coverage it gave me.

I had a bear of a time setting a digipath for WIDE1-2, WIDE2-2.  Like I said, 
your manual will not explain this at all.  If you need help setting alternate 
paths, feel free to post back and I'll share what I learned with 
trial-n-error with this rig.

BEST O LUCK, 73



-- 
jaye, ke6sls

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