
                      APRS Newsletter 1 of 2
                           June 12, 1994
 
It has been a long time since the last issue went out of the APRS
newsletter so I thought I would throw together a little something
and see if we can get the mail flow going again since Dayton. It
was at about the time Dayton was over that all of the APRS mail
for both the newsletter and in general messages to APRS@USBBS
almost came to a complete halt. This by no means seems to be a
sign that interest is droping off, on the contrary I seem to see
an increase on the bands, both on our local VHF Net and on the 30M
frequency.  While in the past APRS mail was so heavy every day I
would capture to disk all of the messages to APRS in general and
personally for the newsletter and read them later off line. Since
Dayton I can probably count on one hand what has come in. In some
ways I am lucky, in this interim I have switched to a 486DX2/66
under Windows and Word Perfect 6.0 Windows that I am still trying
to learn. This "Newsletter" is more a call for articles and
comments from all the APRS users out there as before so we can get
the ball on the roll again. It seems that everyone enjoyed the
news from other parts of the country and various ideas so let's
get it going once more now that everyone that went to Dayton has
had a chance to rest up.  Most of what I am including in this
issue is information that I have gathered from the HF net and
local activity here in South Florida. I would like to especially
hear from the New England Net who has not been seen for quite some
time on HF and the SF Bay Area Net since we do not get much of a
chance to contact them on HF due to conditions. For the local
groups who do not have a HF Gateway please check in and let us
know you are there and what you have going on.
 
                         Words from WB4APR
 
I recently spoke to Bob and he states that some stations using
APRS on a 8088 in HSP mode may have some problems with the Comm
port backing up with GPS data. This problem may have been around
for quite some time, but no one may have tried the HSP box with a
8088 and a VERBOSE GPS till' now so this problem should be
resolved soon, if not all ready for a future version of APRS.
Bob and I also spoke of an idea that I had of placing objects on
the actual APRS maps instead of needing to uplink them on
a possibly busy frequency and worrying if a late addition on the
net does not have it on the map. Bob posed great interest in
adding this to MAPFIX.BAS and hopefully will have it available on
the next major version. What this will do is permit APRS
users to save the various object ICONS to the actual map just as
if you were drawing a new street on a pre-drawn APRS map. This
will give us the ability in a emergency situation to run APRS and
already have the various care centers (Hospitals, Shelters, Supply
Distribution Points, Fire Houses, Police Departments) and other
interest points as Airports, Hellistops, Communication Towers,
Digi's, Repeaters, etc. on our map. The need to have someone
bother uplinking objects and tying up the frequency can detract
from other more important chores when a comm point is first
mobilized. Bob also stated that over the Memorial Day weekend he
completed quite a number of new ICONS that should be in the next
upgrade of APRS. This should work well with the new idea of
drawing local specialized maps.  Well it's that time of the year
and the USNA cadets are out in training.  If you would like to see
them in "action" tune into 6260 MHz or 5250 MHz but REMEMBER TO
DISABLE YOUR TRANSMITTER!! this is not an amateur allocation.
 
                     Hurricane Season is Here
 
Moments before sitting at the PC to write this I was attending the
Hurricane Awareness presentation at the local mall which was
attended by the local county EOC's and sponsored by our local ABC
TV affiliate just to mention a few. Who will be the first to track
the first storm of the season with APRS? As I am writing this the
Tampa Bay area is posting a simulated Hurricane on APRS which is
coming back to FL's East Coast VHF Net via the HF GATE. KK4XI and
KD4UYR with Pinellas County are quite involved in APRS
implementation and did a demonstration at this weeks Hurricane
Symposium. The Palm Beach County EOC Director who is also a active
ham was in attendance and impressed, now he has a copy of v5.03 in
his possession after seeing earlier versions of APRS during a
packet meeting held at the county EOC.  Hurricanes are a concern
mostly of the tropics but I would like to hear from other in the
central and northern latitudes and how they have used APRS so we
can pass it along to other users.
 
                        LL BBS's with APRS
 
If anyone is interested in getting APRS via LL modem the ARN BBS
is the first place that new APRS files are posted, shall we call
it the "File Server" ??? Many times the BBS will be busy
especially just after a new release of APRS, so I have started
posting all APRS files and programs on a local BBS here in Palm
Beach County Florida. The BBS is called Ham Bites BBS and is run
by Jay KD4VBS at (407) 575-9680 (DATA). The BBS is a full service
board and runs 14.4K 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  The BBS is not
very busy at all so your chances of logging on at the first call
are great and I will try to have all new versions of APRS on-line
within 24 hours of posting on ARN. For some of you it may be less
expensive to call FL than MD so this is another plus, I would like
to try to get this idea to spread to other parts of the country so
everyone can save a few dollars and also be able to have access to
the program without needing to listen to 2 or more hours of busy
signals. With this in mind I am putting out a call for APRS users
who are BBS sysops to send me all of the information and a
"commitment" to do there best of getting the newest version of
APRS on their BBS as soon as it is released. I will then compile a
list of these BBS's and try to organize another level of servers
for larger states which could use 2 local APRS Servers so LL costs
are kept to a minimum for all. California, Florida, Texas, and New
York are examples of a few states that can use a few BBS's to
serve the state with APRS files. Let's start the project with an
Ohio BBS that I saw some mail from.
 
John KB8JXO Columbus Ohio (614) 443-4249 up to 14.4K (US Robotics
Users D/C Automatic Compression)  KB8JXO@WB8CQK.#CMH.OH.USA.NA
 

                      APRS Newsletter 2 of 2
                           June 13, 1994
 
                    Other APRS Frequencies.....
 
Various APRS frequencies are popping up starting on HF we have
7.085 / 10.151 / 14.098 LSB. On VHF 145.79 is becoming
quite a standard but I have heard of 145.01 being used in
California, 145. 77 in Montreal, 147.345 in Southern NJ while
145.79 is in use in Central and Northern NJ. What frequency is
being used in your area and if it is not 145.79 is there any
particular reason? Many frequency coordination councils are
accepting 145.79 as a standard APRS frequency and it is
making the wish of .79 being nationwide somewhat of a possibility
If any of you have contact with your local packet or
repeater committee please see if you can initiate a proposal that
145.79 will be set aside for the APRS Network.
 
                      ARRL Repeater Directory
 
As many of you know the ARRL Repeater Directory does have a
listing of various packet BBS's and Digi's in the back of their
book. A quick look at the state of Maryland has a listing for
145.79 with Various under location and call and WIDE under
notes. If you have an established APRS net in your area please
make it a point to submit a form to the ARRL to so it will be
listed for any traveling APRS user. An idea may be to list all
the WIDE area digi's serving the state and at least what town it
is in so others can have an idea if it can be reached from their
location or not. WIDE under notes or whatever the alias is a
great idea and maybe the addition of a space and a G would inform
others that a GATEWAY serves that digi's service area.
 
                   PacComm's Endorsement of APRS
 
I have recently just received the Spring edition of the PacComm
Catalog and was pleasantly surprised when I opened it to find
APRS as big as life! on it's front cover. PacComm in the past has
been thoughtful of the APRS user and it seems that the support
will continue. I have spoken to one of their code writers and
passed along the idea of having the firmware understand APRS's
Query command of ?APRS which it transmits upon startup. This
addition to the code would permit more users to be active even
without a PC and permit them to keep their beacon interval to a
minimum. Maybe more of the TNC manufacturers will catch on and
provide commands for APRS use on their TNC's. The more publicity
that the manufacturers give APRS the stronger we will grow.
 
                   Networking APRS into a System
 
I am looking for suggestions and help from others on possibilities
for linking APRS into a LARGE network. Here in the South Florida
area we have seen a steady but slow growth of APRS. One of the
problems is that interest seems to crop up between 2 or so
stations and these stations seem to be just a bit too far from the
others to maintain a reliable link all the time. One of our
specific problems is that we do not have any "man made towers" and
to get any decent range on VHF/UHF we must have access to towers
of significant height. Yes, we do not have the shadow problems
that other states have with high mountains but usually those
mountains are a blessing since it is easier to get a site on one
than on a already jam packed 300 or 500 ft. tower. A 300 or 500
ft. tower is also usually no where near the altitude that a "small
hill" in some states can offer, so a "good site" for us is quite
poor in some respects to our Northern and Western brothers.  The
way this comes into play with APRS is that we need many more WIDE
area digi's to cover what in some areas can be covered with two or
so. The unique problem that we face (and I am sure many other
southern states will in the future) is that this makes the [UI]
packet UNPROTO wording difficult. If given unlimited resources
with equipment and digi's we could put up enough of them to cover
the Southern portion of Florida but how do we make sure that all
of the packets will make it thru the system without the need to
change the UNPROTO path every time we need to go in another
direction. The point of a WIDE AREA NETWORK with APRS is that
EVERYONE can see what is going on and also track support/supplies
on the way to and from any disaster areas. With one common network
we may have a high level of traffic but after experiencing the
Army/Navy Football run I am sure we can handle the traffic as long
as we have some sort of control over idle chatter. This will give
us the ability to assign certain UPLINKING tasks to distant APRS
stations that may not be as busy with traffic, or the task of
Hurricane Position UPLINKS from the National Hurricane Ctr. in
Coral Gables so everyone in South Florida can copy the 1 original
position report.  Any comments or help would be appreciated......
 
                          Final Comments
 
The HF Net has been doing well with no problems to speak of other
than the summer propagation, APRS got a great boost from PacComm,
growth seems to be at a slow but consistent level, and many more
stations seem to be springing for the addition of a GPS receiver,
we can't ask for anything more than that!  I would like to hear
from anyone who attended the APRS presentation Saturday night in
Dayton. I am sure there was much to speak about that many of us
poor souls who worked instead missed out on.  I was told that a
informal article was going to be written up for the newsletter but
I have yet to receive it, so if someone would like to please do
so. Just write it up, maintain it to 70 columns wide so I can
paste it directly to the next newsletter and write it as if it
were directed to everyone.
 
               73's to all de Rich N2CZF Jupiter FL.
      Address all packet mail to: N2CZF@WB4MOZ.#WPBFL.FL.USA
