[aprssig] SSID Standardization

[Bob Burns W9RXR]

Quoting Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu>:

>> Bob, what mobile radio are you looking at that
>> doesn't display the  APRS symbol?
>
> The D7, the D700 and the D710 AFTER the first time the station
> is heard.
>
> You only get that the first time that station is heard.  From
> then on, all you get is "dP CALL-SSID" in a tiny location on the
> screen.

Which implies that there's a possibility that the station is going to  
change it's conditions after the first time you hear it. How often  
does that happen? Am I missing something here? Yes, your point about  
not being able to memorize the symbols for all 100 entries in the list  
is well taken.

If I drive into an area and hear a local digi that's using WA9XYZ-1 as  
it's callsign and using the symbol for the appropriate green star  
(overlaid with a 1, S, etc.), I will see the symbol on my display and  
know there's a digi around. That station isn't likely to change from  
being a digi to some other type of station no matter how many times it  
transmits it's position. If the type of station, it's position, and  
it's status text doesn't change while I'm in the area, I'm not sure I  
care about it.

> This is a big frustrration of mine, since I want to see
> all the info on every packet, not just the first time I hear
> that station.

I'd be happy with just seeing all the info on every beacon without  
having to parse the data that's scrolling by in the monitor screen.  
I'm glad Kenwood gave us three pages of data for each beacon along  
with the path information, but I'd like to see one more screen that  
just shows me the raw data for that beacon.

> Most of the time you never see the symbols.

Maybe Kenwood could add a symbol column to the list view. I think  
having a symbol column would be more useful than the frequency column.  
Maybe allow the user to toggle between symbol and frequency.

Kenwood, are you listening? There are some ideas for firmware upgrades  
in this email. <grin>

Bob...