APRS (ham radio)

Guy from a FB group I am in recently went from South Texas to Alaska, here is his track via APRS.
The dashed lines are where he was not able to be tracked, a few spots in the contiguous 48. A little more power and a higher gain antenna may have filled in a few of those spots.
Not 100% coverage but still useful. I sent him some messages via APRS along the way, some made it, some didn't. Passing messages and your location appearing on the internet is all based on infrastructure put up by private individuals and radio clubs. Unfortunately some of the internet gateways are receive only, which prevents any messages from being passed from the Internet to RF which is a problem I have locally. I can sent local messages through a digital repeater, but if it has to go through the internet to someone out of my area I would not get their response. I can still send messages though and that is good to at least check in with the wife to say I am ok.

 

I recently took a short trip to SE/S Oklahoma over 6 days (about 450 miles) and had my APRS radio going the whole time. As you can see the digipeater coverage in SE Oklahoma is scarce. The only packets I got through were to digipeaters between 120 and 160 miles away, one in NE Oklahoma and the other in Arkansas. Not fool proof but still a good tool and fun to play with.

 

Holy crap Jon do you sleep with that radio? @Prerunner1982

 

Keeps me warm at night.

 

Hi...It is a two-way tactical real-time digital communications system between all assets in a network sharing information about everything going on in the local area. On ham radio, this means if something is happening now, or there is information that could be valuable to you, then it should show up on your APRS radio in your mobile.

seo toronto

 

Or at least that was Bob Bruninga's idea behind it. Typically twice a year I see icons on the local APRS network that are not vehicles or digi/voice repeaters.
April: aid/medical stations for the local marathon
June: Field day stations are posted.
Other than that it's the same handful of stations tracking their vehicles, including myself.

I use it for passing messages as well both via terrestrial and satellite.

 

APRS has been around for a long time but my experience with it (starting out with Kenwood D700a then the D710 and now the Yaesu FTM400) has been that very few in the Jeep world have APRS radios/capability. APRSdroid works well if you have cell phone service but the kind of off roading I do can have me out of any cell phone range for days at a time.

One other person mentioned much earlier in this conversation that they wished off-roaders would switch from CD to GMRS. The 150 member club that I belong too tried to get our members to get their ham license beginning in 2008. By 2018 we only could get 40% of our members to become licensed and many of the rest decided to just go out and buy a $35 Baofeng and use it anyway. Several of our long term Ham operators said we were allowing the law to be violated by allowing the use of the Baofengs by unlicensed operators, our board agreed and prohibited the use of any ham radio by an unlicensed member. Later in 2018 we did a 2900 mile, 19 day off road trip thru 6 states (Heart of the West Trail) and the dozen of us on that trip all used various models of the Midland MicroMobile radios. Over those 19 days the members on that trip were asking why we didn't use these radios before. Our best experience was with the 15w and 40w MicroMobile radios. The 5w MicroMobile was decent but we got the best range with the higher wattage radios on the trails. The hand helds with their short antennas just sucked inside the Jeeps. Range was poor with the hand held units. By November of 2018 our Board of Directors voted unanimously to require 15w minimum Midland MicroMobile (Midland is the only maker of this type of radio that we know of) in order to participate in club events. That policy went into effect in Jan 2020. In Dec of 2018 we did a group buy at a discount with Midland and purchased over $15K in radios, antennas and accessories and instantly had 60% of our members on board with GMRS by Jan of 2019. During 2019, most of our participants had GMRS 15w and up radios and when Jan 2020 hit, we had over 80% of members on board with the required GMRS equipment.

We still us the Midland T70 series hand helds for spotting and around camp but not in our Jeeps. We feel that not only is our off road experience more enjoyable because all Jeeps now transmit and receive the same crystal clear transmissions that us Ham operators on 70cm had for years. It also makes it safer for us in that everyone now can be heard clearly from the front to the back of the group and everywhere in between.

For the most part the CB in my Jeep only gets turned on when I am on the highway so I can listen to traffic "reports" from truckers. I still keep my FTM400 Ham radio on for APRS and long distance emergency needs via repeaters but my MXT400 (40watt) Midland MicroMobile radio is my main communications device on the trails.

Recently Jeep Jamborees have made Midland GMRS radios their official radio and no longer use CBs on their organized events and I am seeing more and more Jeep clubs going to GMRS and dumping CB for good reason.

Sorry to hijack this topic........................