[OZAPRS] Pros and Cons of changing VK3's APRS frequency

[Hamish Moffatt]

Hi all. Good analysis of the situation Richard.
Just a few comments below.

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 03:32:48PM +1000, Richard Hoskin wrote:
> Pros.
> ---------
> - One channel for all APRS in VK.
> - Provide seamless communications for Mobile stations across the
> country.
> - Provide a seamless APRS VHF RF link between VK2 & VK3.

I suppose this is the biggest advantage (judging by the comment about
rail gauges someone else made). I have to wonder how much impact the
current situation is having though. How many people are running mobile
APRS in Australia, how many are moving in and out of VK3 and how often?

If you come down here on holiday in the car you change frequency once
when you arrive and once again when you leave. Not terribly difficult
really. If you were travelling back and forward every day it might get
tiresome. Is anyone doing that though?

> Cons
> ---------
> - Cost of changing the VK3 frequency is estimated to be about $2500 for
> xtals and other items.
> - Retuning of 14 Digipeaters and associated equipment would be required.
> (Approx 1 months full time work to do this)

Also you would have some period during the transition where things
weren't working very well as some repeaters had moved frequency while
others hadn't yet. You obviously can't expect to change all the
repeaters over in a single day even with months of preparation.

I think having a single frequency looks nice on paper but the effort to
switch doesn't seem justified. Just one last snide remark: remember than
in Victoria we are on a non-standard frequency because we were the first
to set up a network :-) and well before a co-ordinated frequency was
assigned.

Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish at debian.org> <hamish at cloud.net.au>
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