Now that christmas is approaching it was time to make the trip slightly further north to visit the xyl's family home in Troon. naturally I would go with a rig of some description and I managed to slip a magmount and a 2m/70cm whip on the car and my sota MFD in the boot whilst the rest of the family were distracted with the fresh snow. It took a few miles up the M74 before I was busted and out of APRS range from the local stations. Good thing was that with this antenna and a measly 5w I was gated up until just before Dumfries. Bad news was that that was it and APrs.fi noted there wasn't another iGate anywhere near the rest of the journey.
What's all this got to do with reapeaters? Well thinking about this gave me the thought that if the repeaters had an iGate then chances are most of the country would have good coverage. I wonder if this has ever been thought of before? It would certainly add another avenue to APRS and open up the network to more than just the useful volunteers that kind gate me (G4PEW, 2E0XSD, G4ILO, G8WVW, MM1BHO & MM1MPB
The other nice thing was that with my measly 5w and the rubber duck I can just about get access to GB3AY from the house so I at least have an avenue to play with over christmas. I wonder if the mother in law would mind a beam in her back garden...hmmm thought not. Still nice to be able to get into a repeater when away from the house
Hi Alex. I agree, and it has been thought of, though only for gating position reports not messaging. It's called Mic-E, and the idea is that a packet burst containing your position is transmitted at the end of each over when you release the PTT. Several of the PIC based trackers have an option to transmit when the PTT is relased so they can be wired in parallel with the mic. The Kenwood TH-D72 appears to support it as well (haven't tried, but it seemed to from the manual.) Not sure about the VX-8 series.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is persuading repeater keepers to support it. It isn't as easy as it sounds because they need to take measures to prevent the packet burst being transmitted over the output, as well as providing a way to gate the data into the APRS network (not all repeaters sre internet-connected.) And the position reports are only sent at the end of an over so you have to be talking on the repeater. Listeners might find it annoying to have people kerchunking the repeater just to log their position.
D-Star's DPRS does a similar thing but using a data channel that is sent while you are talking.