Monday, July 11, 2011

Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS)

For the last month or so I have taken up interest in APRS. A couple of years ago I purchased some trackers, one TinyTrak3 and a two Opentracker+ units. They all worked great but just running a tracker in my car started to bore me very fast. I remember thinking that it has to be more to APRS than just tracking. Now I can tell that Bob Bruninga, the father of APRS, agrees. APRS was never intended to be a vehicle tracking service! He wanted it to be a single point of information on what's going on in ham radio in the area.

The main reason for my newly gained interest is the ability to selfspot to Sotawatch via APRS. The APRS coverage here in Norway is rapidly improving and I think I can reach a digipeater from virtually any of the LA/TM sotas these days. I'm now waiting for a Yaesu VX-8GE to arrive from Germany. This HT has built in GPS and APRS possibilities and will let me send and receive both APRS beacons and APRS text messages.

Automatic Packet Reporting system by Bob Bruninga
APRS2SOTA Spot Server
SpotAPRS Gateway

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