Steve Fossett

On Sep 6, 12:15 pm, wrote:

How many APRS repeaters/IGATEs are there in the Nevada desert one
would be able to hit from a low altitude?

If you go to http://aprs.he.fi and login with CW5091 (a near APRS
weather station) and zoom out, you will see a bunch of digi's. Even a
crop sprayer plane will have tremendous advantage at low altitude over
a ground vehicle. I travelled west over Montana/Washington mountains
and rarely there was a gap in position reports.

To be useful to the FAA, there would have to be a way to correlate
your N number to your HAM callsign and there must be procedure for
the FAA to know where the APRS internet sites are and to look you
up.

A simple solution: I have a $20/yr website that correlates my tracker
with findu.com position. My relatives and FAA can know where my plane
is by going to the website. I simply put the website URL in my flight
plan comments for live tracking. Never been refused by FAA so far -
they are even enthusiastic.

Note: You can also use your N tail number instead of HAM callsign for
APRS tracking - just put your HAM callsign at the end of the digital
string to satisfy FCC.

You can choose your website URL something like MyPlanexxx.com for easy
entry - something simple like N345Q.com would be very easy to tell FAA
for flight plan comments. If your absolutely don't know how to make a
simple web page a friend can do it for you.