[SMCARA] APRS Buoy underway

[A.J. Farmer]

Bob Bruninga and his midshipmen students at the Naval Academy are
doing an APRS Buoy experiment right now.  This is something that has
been discussed for years.  Basically, it is a free floating buoy with
batteries and a solar panel and an APRS beacon to report back
telemetry.  They let it go in the Severn river about a week ago, and
it has finally made it into the bay.  You can view it's current
position here:

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=BUOY-4

Here is a position track:

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/track.cgi?call=BUOY-4&geo=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aj3u.com%2Faprs%2Fsomd.geo&start=10000

Keep checking the links over the coming days and weeks to see where it goes.

My understanding is this is a first stage towards what is to be an
ocean floating buoy that will report telemetry to an orbiting APRS
satellite.  Pretty cool stuff.

Here is the website that describes the project:

http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/buoy.html

A.J.