[aprssig] [APRS] Re: Red Bull Stratos Balloon

[Robert Bruninga]

>> Track STRTOS and STRTOS-11
>>
>> I was surprised that no one else was inputting objects,
>> so I... enetered the STRTOS and STRTOS-11 objects. ...
>> Remember, APRS was made to track ANYTHING and distribute
>> that info to everyone. Does not need GPS.

> Except that the timing would have been correct with a GPS.

But there was no GPS.  And as a nationally very-interesting event, it
seemed logical to put it into APRS.  Lamenting that the STRATOS team did
not put an APRS tracker on it doesn’t really help anyone see it out there
in APRS world.  Ham radio is an AS-IS system.  Recognize a need, do
something.  Manually inputing objects is a powerful tool when something is
of interest to the community and does not happen to have a working APRS
system on board.

> But this manual entry/updating seems to have failed ---
> It was never killed or updated.    Nearly five days later,
> the balloon is STILL showing as being at 127946 feet.....

Neither APRS nor the method failed.  I intentionally left the altitude on
the object as a marker for this historic event, including the record
braking altitude so that when viewed in 3D, one can see how high that was.
(APRSdos can give a 3D display for nice viewing of aircraft and balloons).

But you are correct, for a typical event, I would have failed to send the
final object or to KILL it.  Though I did send KILLS on the original
STRTOS object and APRS.FI seems to not honor, nor at least indicate that
it had been killed. I think the object should be retained as APRS.FI does
now, but it should clearly show also that it had been "killed".

But as to being a "failed method", not true.  Any one out of the possible
hundreds of other APRS operators (including yourself) who noticed the
problem could have updated the object or killed it.  That is the beauty of
APRS as a distributed INFO system.  ANYONE with better knowledge about
anything on APRS can correct it and everyone will see the correction.
This is why anyone can take over any object and update it.

So thanks.  This is a good example of why this anyone-can-update method
exists.  So anyone can fix a problem they see.

I was going to send out a KILL object now to correct it, but then decided
to keep it there, again, as just a capture of that world record.

Thanks
Bob, WB4APR