Dayton Mobile Settings: 30 April 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Some of these items are even for NON APRS radios and users. But for those with APRS radios, many people never use them to their full potential. Here are some tips for the annual Dayton Travel weekend you can use to make your radio very useful to you AND to others. Here are the topics in this file: - Voice Channels and Voice Alert - Milemarks for tracking other voice users - DTMF reporting via APRStt - Load OBJECTS: TRAFFC, WRECK, SLOW, STOPPD, POLICE, SMOKIE, DONUTS - Community Digipeater Settings to benefit travelers ALL TRAVELERS AND ALL RADIOS EVEN WITHOUT APRS: ----------------------------------------------- - Monitor 146.52, and/or 144.39 with CTCSS 100 146.52 is great for stumbling into existing QSO's but unless you call CQ there every 2 minutes, you may miss others passing. Instead, monitor 144.39 with CTCSS 100. Whenever any other APRS mobile running APRS voice alert gets within simplex range, you will automatically hear a fractional second tone burst once every minute or so from their APRS Voice Alert System. VOICE ALERT: Only the direct packets from an APRS mobile running Voice Alert have CTCSS 100 on them. This isolates them from the hundreds of other digipeated packets that saturate the channel. By setting CTCSS 100 and monitoring the channel, you can hear when another voice operator running voice alert is in range. When you hear one, just key up, make voice contact and QSY to 52 or 446.00 (so you are not competing with all the other packets on the 144.39 channel). 446.00 is preferred by APRS operators, since the UHF will not interfere with their APRS reception while talking. Even if you are not running APRS, you can still monitor for these other operators. Why is this better than 52? Because it is like an automatic "CQ 52" once a minute. This guarantees you will be able to make contact even in a passing situation. On 52, most contacts are ships-passing-in-the-night completely unaware of each other unless everyone is calling CQ every minute the entire trip. In a crossing situation, you are only in simplex range for about 3 minutes or so (2 miles a minute crossing situation). By using the automatic APRS Voice Alert system, you can't miss someone. Come join us. NON-APRS TRACKING TO DAYTON: Even if you don't run APRS or a GPS but do have an old TNC, you too can be tracked within a few tens of miles all the way to Dayton. This is because the Global APRS system can at least identify where was the last digipeater that heard your TNC. Just make these basic settings in the TNC: MYCALL (your call) BTEXT Dayton or bust (or suitable short text) BEACON once every 3 minutes UNPROTO APRSBT VIA WIDE2-2 Even without a position report, this packet, anywhere, anytime on the APRS frequency (144.39 in America) will allow your position to be identified to the nearest 10 to 20 miles or so. Tell family to use this URL (with your callsign): http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=wb4apr&vicinity=1 Notice that it is just a normal FINDU.COM URL, but you add "&vicinity=1" on the end of it to tell it to display the nearest digi that heard you. VOICE ALERT WITHOUT APRS?! Sure, anyone can receive voice alert just by setting CTCSS on 144.39. But you can also PING if you want. Just load something like ">Joe Enroute Dayton Voice Alert" into the Btext of any old TNC and set the beacon rate to once every minute, again with CTCSS 100. Now all APRS people will hear you when they get in simplex range of you and may call you and you both then can go to 52. Be sure to set your UNPROTO PATH to "UNPROTO APRS" without any digipeaters, because beyond simplex range, you are only QRM. see this web page: http://aprs.org/VoiceAlert3.html FOR USERS WITH APRS RADIOS! ----------------------------- APRS MOBILE SETTINGS FOR DAYTON: Set your TNC or tracker to the path of VIA WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1. This will get you out farther than you can talk though any voice repeater, and should be sufficient. Set your beacon rate to 1 minute and proportional pathing if you have it so that you have 1 minute updates locally, but less QRM farther away. Anything over 3 minutes is too old and at 140 MPH crossing speeds you can miss each other. APRS LAPTOP SETTINGS FOR DAYTON: First, let someone else drive so you can spend the 8 hour trip playing APRS like never before. Use the above path, but also put whatever Voice channel you are monitoring, make sure that is included in your POSIT PACKET so that all other APRS mobiles can see what voice repeater you are monitoring. SOFTWARE SELECTION AND MILEMARKS: Make sure you use an APRS program that fully supports the fundamental milemarks and Dead- reckoning! MILE-MARKS: Most mobiles will not have APRS, but ALL of them will know their position by their milemark. APRS has a built in mile-mark system that will allow you to place someone you are in QSO with on the map by just asking them their mile mark, entering the route number and mile mark, and BINGO you have placed a vehicle object on the map at their location. Assuming they are headed to Dayton, then you can enter an estimated CSE and SPEED. From that point on, that CAR and its object will continue to move on your APRS map toward Dayton and so even without GPS, you have a good approximation where that person is. You can AMAZE him by calling him every half hour or so and mentioning "I see you are approaching Crabtown". "How can you tell that?" Because I am tracking you with APRS. "But I don't have APRS". And you answer. "But I do"... MILEMARKS and Dead Reckoning were fundamental to allow APRS to see the Tactical Situation around them, INCLUDING all stations participating even if they don't have APRS. Once you put "joe" on the map moving to Dayton, ALL OTHER APRS mobiles within 100 miles or more of you will also see JOE on their maps. And if they have Dead Reckoning Enabled, then Joe should continue to move on their maps too. You can even enter his frequency in his object text, so that others know what freq to contct him on. If joe stops for a rest stop, next time he mentions a milemark, just click and drag him to the new milemark, and his DR will be updated on everyone else's map too. Without Dead Reckoining, the map display of an APRS client is always wrong. It always shows where things were 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 minuets ago, which is pretty useless in maintaining "situational awareness"!!! Turn on DR going to Dayton! And USE MILE MARKS and objects to show us everyone else on the road in range, not just the APRS folks. APRS was never desigend to be an end-in-itself, but to be a tool for ALL OF Amateur Radio. PRELOAD OBJECTS INTO YOUR PM MEMORIES: Pre-load your D700/710 with a few OBJECT names... If you see a situation of interest to your fellow travelers, you can send out the OBJECT at your present location.. You would never use this of course, to avoid a SMOKIE speed trap, but only to help fellow motorists find a partially hidden policeman (or other object) in time of need... You can save up to 4 such objects in your other 4 PM's temporarily. The only requirements in those PM's are these: MYCALL = SLOW [or WRECK, TRAFFC, STUCK, LUNCH, DINNER, SMOKIE, DONUTS, POLICE, etc] STATUS = "de CCCCCC" <= your call GPS ON clearly you cannot use a fixed posit here... And optionally set these items if available: PATH = WIDE1-1 or more (though any path will do...) PKT TX = MANUAL, (but any existing one will do) Notice that only the first three are required, and one status can be re-used by any PM. So for the Dayton travel weekend, you can actually re-use any of your existing PM's by making only those 2 changes, and then remembering to change them back after the trip. When you want to transmit an OBJECT, just switch to that PM, press the BCON button a few times in the next 30 seconds until you think you got out. Do not keep sending it further down the road, because you don't want it to follow you! THEN switch back to your regular traveling PM. Enjoy! COMMUNITY DIGIPEATER SUPPORT FOR TRAVELERS: ------------------------------------------- ALL DIGIPEATER OWNERS: Make sure your digitpeater has the proper settings for the New-N paradigm. For details see: http://aprs.org/fix14439.html DIGIS IN DAYTON: Turn off WIDEn-N support except for ONE HOP. This whould be able to support 150 APRS mobiles which is typial of APRS in Dayton. TO do this (assuming you have set your digi for New-N above): 1) Set UITRACE to TEMP,30 2) Set UIDIGI ON WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2,WIDE3-3 This will cause these digipeaters to digipeat any/all mobiles ONE HOP no matter whether they are using 1, 2, or 3 hops. This will prevent any outside QRM from coming in. WATCH FOR RECEOMMENDED VOICE REPEATER FREQUENCEIS ON THE FRONT PANEL OF YOUR MOBILE APRS RADIO: Many areas are supporting the "New Local Info Initiative" which transmits local-direct info on the recommended voice repeater in their area for direct display on the D7, D700 and HamHUD mobile Displays. See: http://aprs.org/localinfo.html Hope I got everyting covered. I'll be PASSENGER mobile this year and will be playing APRS all the way from Maryland to Dayton on Thursday night and Friday morning. For more Dayton detail Recommendations, please see this page: http://aprs.org/dayton/DaytonPilgrimage.txt Bob Bruninga WB4APR