[OZAPRS] DX or Local?

[Noel Rowe]

I guess I am one of the ones to take the blame for drawing attention to
the "DX" APRS stations heard on 30m, and no, I wasnt doing it just to show
how good it was that we are now all on the same worldwide frequency!
 
What I was trying to do was to drum up enthusiasm for APRS on the HF bands
by highlighting the "wow factor" (ie you never know what you may hear)
rather than stress the desirability of hearing from afar.  I do agree that
our priority is to cover our joint VK/ZL area well.  However propagation
will dictate what we hear.  Most times we are not going to hear anything
decodable from far away on 30m.
 
I think it will be a long time before we fill the HF bands to saturation.
As more mobile stations get on, it may be that the gateway stations will
need to transmit a lot less frequently than they do now, maybe hardly at
all other than when requested as an ECHO for netting purposes.    At
present they are doing a good job giving us signals to play with.   And
whilst helping in a test mode, once coverage patterns emerge there will be
no need for any home station, that has VHF local access and is not an
i-gate, to be beaconing on HF.
 
My long term vision of APRS on the HF bands is that there will be lots of
mobile stations (not so much in main centres where there is good VHF
coverage) using it, with a number of widely spaced receiving stations in
both VK and ZL set up to intercept anything heard and to get it into the
internet system.  And the mobiles will know that someone, somewhere, will
hear them and i-gate them.  Then its up to the i-gates to know what to do
with what is being heard.
 
Noel, ZL3GR.   
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