On Sep 20, 8:54*am, bildan wrote:

My APRS tracker is flying again today, for those who wish to watch a
304
enjoy his Sunday afternoon. KI6RFR-7
Sorry Oscar, for listing your call sign incorrectly yesterday.

APRS tracking followed me from Cal City to Elko, and Cal City to
Carson Valley
each of the last two Dust Devil Dashes. I had coverage down to about
1300 ft agl
on the back side of the Whites, using Lida Jct. Dry Lake as an
alternate headed
toward Tonopah in 2007. My crew loved having the ability to follow me
real time on his handy-talkie unit that displayed my lat-long and let
him know
which way to turn, US Hwy 6 or continue on Hwy 395. The friends at
home got to
follow those flights also. Now, you can find/build tracking map
displays,
but I haven't investigated that portion of hardware.

Philip may not understand that with our basin and range style flying,
there is a lot of territory, even within 30 miles of home, where we do
not have
line of sight for VHF radio aircraft transmissions.
Using the APRS digi-peaters ( shown on the US map link), you can
see that the relaying feature of digipeaters gives us quite excellent
coverage, even in the remote western portions of the US.
Ranchers, agri-business, mining operations have used amateur radio
contacts to contact the 'urban' world for many years. Hence, the
network
is already in place.

You can choose the 'lower-cost' techno-dweeb build-it-yourself
packages, or you can find the Kenwood and Yaesu handheld talkies
with APRS add-on features as a buy-and-play style option.
I went with the Yaesu-VX-8 as a complete package. It offers the
option to 'talk', send data and APRS and monitor aviation bands
all in one (not cheap) unit. The top of the line cost ~the same as a
Spot and two-years of subscription, for more utility.

The Amateur radio written test is not much tougher than the
Private glider written, with the same access to the questions
and answer bank from which to study. The test is only $14, and no,
you do not need to learn Morse Code. Hey - I passed it!

I will trust that my flying friends will give faster 911 response to
my
halted APRS signal than any public agency ever will . . . . to any
request for service. (Smile.)

Does anyone think this would be a fun way to allow other club
pilots to 'watch' cross-country from the clubhouse? It could be used
as a tool to promote a glider event's public access through local
media. Fly a bunch of Boy Scouts, or rides for a donations
campaign, or a contest day, and have the local newspaper tell folks
they can watch this happen on the website, with a call sign list.
Tracking is a cheap alternative to allow the public to witness local
flight activity, as an alternate function to the flight search and
rescue
or retrieve simplicity function.

Best wishes,
Cindy B




In the track call sign window enter: *KI6RFR-7, KM6TS-7 and N6PAZ-7..
Choose a Show Last: *time of three hours or so.
You can also enter any one call sign, slide over to the Select Date
window,
and enter any year, and then date select under that for the archives.

You can see the natiowide coverage of digi-peaters at this page:http://wa8lmf.net/APRSmaps/NorthAmericaSmall.htm


Good stuff, Cindy.

While Spot will work in extremely remote areas where APRS wouldn't, in
fact there are few areas where APRS isn't available.

The better update frequency with altitude information plus far lower
cost make APRS very attractive for operations where gliders rarely, if
ever, fly beyond APRS coverage.

Given the extremely low cost for APRS, there's no reason not to use
both. *APRS could be the standard for real-time tracking, with Spot as
the emergency backup or when flying really remote areas.

The real knock against APRS is it isn't a 100% 'checkbook' solution -
you have to invest some intellectual currency to get the technical
license and get the equipment. *With Spot, you just spend the money
and turn it on.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -