[aprssig] 30M APRS and digipeaters...

[Bill Vodall]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Bob Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:

> I have always personally thought it would be useful to have a few MEGA
> STATION digipeaters but as soon as we open that pandora's box, EVERYONE
> becomes a digi.  That is why I had hoped that the "mega stations" of most
> advantage to operators would be obvious to the operators and then people
> would use them (not generically) but by specific callsign, which is OK in my
> book.

Maybe we could do something like the VHF plan with :

MEGA STATION ==> wide area digi ==> similar to VHF WIDE2-1 == > ?? on
HF for hourly automatic digipeating...

'(almost) everybody' ==> local fill-in ==> similar to VHF WIDE1-1 == >
?? on HF available for manual polling on the channel...

The problem might be the same as we see on VHF where there appear to
be more WIDE2-X and fill-in WIDE2-1 than are needed...

> That way we kinda get what we both want.  I remember back when I was on 30m
> 24/7/365, that is was obvious to me who was always there and who might make
> a good digi for me at any give time.  I just looked at my hit log and picked
> the most consistent station.

This is exactly what I would do today - there are a couple key
stations that bring in most of the packets I hear.   Still if I was
trying to "work somebody" on APRS, it would only be the MEGA stations
and a couple folks digipeating automatically via them in my heard
list.

> Bob, WB4APR

Bill, WA7NWP