[nrv-hams] APRS comments

[Ron Angert]

Thanks to all for your participation in our APRS presentation last night.

I thought of one thing that was not made clear, and that regards using the
commercial product Precision Mapping v9.

One does NOT have to use this.  Maps from other, often free sources can be
used.  For example if you are only interested in the New River Valley, or a
bike race route, you can make maps, assign coordinates to match points on
the graphic image and 'install' them in ui-view32.  This is a lot of work,
so for most people it is much easier to buy the Precision Map option.

Other topics not covered were alternatives to ui-view32, and there are
several.  I have another laptop with XASTIR, a open source product that
runs on Linux.  Maps again are the labor intensive issue.  I downloaded the
tiger maps (Federal Govt maps) that are free.  pretty ugly compared to
Google maps or even Precision Maps. There are other windows based packages
being actively developed as well, but I have no experience wiht them.

BIKE RACE IDEAS:
Another point on the use during bike races etc is that we can move off the
standard APRS freq of 144.390, run our trackers and digipeaters on some
other freq.  I run a digi in my car all the time, so putting someone's
vehicle at each checkpoint running a simple digipeater or ui-view32 with
digi running, possibly with a portable antenna erected, could be a way to
make this work. It would run on the car battery for a week, mine runs for
days on one of those small batteries Mike was giving away last year.

Ron N4AJT

-- 
Ron Angert in Beautiful Southwest Virginia
http://oldbikerider.blogspot.com/

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level
of thinking that
created them." Albert Einstein