[OZAPRS] HF to VHF Confused

[Ray Wells]

I think it's that we have choices that's important.

David and Justine Olsen wrote:
> Ray
>
> Once again thanks for your input and experience. Of course all my coms 
> have been voice. I have no experience with data. That is one reason I 
> am keen to have as many people as possible attemt to access my igate 
> on 40m, if it is in fact a worse choice, I will know for sure before I 
> set of and then we will have to igates on 20m :-)
>
> David
>
>
> On 27 Mar 2009, at 17:48, Ray Wells wrote:
>
>> I would seem that our various experiences over the years are quite 
>> different and variable.
>>
>> Having travelled through the region David intends visiting I can only 
>> recommend 20m to get signals to populated areas. From experience 
>> gathered over a 10 year period on HF with the BBS, there is no 
>> question that 30m wins hands down for signal quality and reliability, 
>> with 20m a not so close second on some routes. I've been using 40m 
>> for the BBS for maybe 8 years now and anything over about 400km is 
>> generally unreliable. Those findings are, of course, somewhat 
>> variable, except for 30m which, on some routes provided 22 hour per 
>> day forwarding. There is also a big difference between a short 
>> position frame and multiple (short - paclen 64) frames required for 
>> bbs traffic.
>>
>> Give that Mother Nature can sometimes be unkind (we recently 
>> experienced many weeks where 40m was totally useless - the O.W.F. was 
>> about 3.5Mhz), the more options that are available, the better.
>>
>> The amateur service does, at least, have the option of alternative 
>> bands and that enhances the possibility of establishing contact.
>>
>> The IPS online prediction service, Grafix, is brilliant for 
>> predicting HF paths and optimum working frequency (OWF).
>>
>> Cheers ... Ray vk2tv
>>
>>
>> David and Justine Olsen wrote:
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>> Thanks for clarifying that.
>>>
>>> I wonder what range you did your testing over? I travel regularly in 
>>> Central Australia SA Deserts and the Kimberley and can talk to home 
>>> (Townsville) most days on 40m and 8MHz VKS.
>>> For me personally the ability to report my position at beginning and 
>>> end of day is more important than during midday, and I think that 
>>> would be the case for most people traveling away from VHF regions. 
>>> Just how many of us are standard calls I have no idea. I am doing my 
>>> advanced call study now, but 5 months of travel will put a halt to 
>>> that :-)
>>>
>>> Anyway it will be fun to see what happens if I run the iGate 24/7 
>>> while I am away, and have my vehicle reporting position for 5 
>>> months. I think not too many people would have the opportunity to 
>>> run a test like that one.
>>>
>>> I will be in Simpson Desert from May to mid June then Cape York (20m 
>>> will be useless Cape York to Townsville except from the very tip) 
>>> Then in the Gulf and Kimberley Regions until end Sept
>>>
>>>
>>> David
>>> VK4MDX
>>>
>>>
>>> On 27 Mar 2009, at 17:17, vk5ex.andrew at gmail wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi David and all,
>>>>
>>>> In the past there were a few HF gateway stations about that were'nt 
>>>> directly connected to the internet. I have in the past been in this 
>>>> category myself however It would be nice to know, who / if there 
>>>> are any HF gates still running that dont have a direct connect to 
>>>> the aprs-is ?    Hence the recommended use of GATE,WIDE2-1 for HF 
>>>> mobiles.
>>>>
>>>> And .. we ( VK5 ) have also done a resaonable amount of testing on 
>>>> 40m for possible HF APRS use back a few years ago. Similar time 
>>>> frame to what Brian was alluding to in his email. At that time we 
>>>> didnt have much success either on 40m, alaways going back to 30m, 
>>>> with perhaps 20m as the second choice. I reckon the main problems 
>>>> were daytime noise levels at the HF gates, along with some funny 
>>>> multipath stuff. Anyway It'll be interesting to see how 40m 
>>>> performs for you this time around. Like you say it would probably 
>>>> be a good option in the long run.
>>>>
>>>> Regards .. Andrew .. VK5EX
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David and Justine Olsen" 
>>>> <davejust at bigpond.net.au>
>>>> To: "Australian APRS Users" <ozaprs at aprs.net.au>
>>>> Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 13:45
>>>> Subject: [OZAPRS] HF to VHF Confused
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I note reference on the Australian aprs site to HF iGates 
>>>>> digipeating  to VHF. Not sure why?
>>>>>
>>>>> My plan for HF at least initially, was to simply receive on 7036 
>>>>> MHz  and upload the data to an APRS server, so that HF stations 
>>>>> can be  tracked. This will be easy to do as it doesn't require 
>>>>> anything other  than my radio, antenna and computer equipped with 
>>>>> soundcard and  internet connection. Am I missing something?
>>>>>
>>>>> David VK4MDX
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Ozaprs mailing list
>>>>> Ozaprs at aprs.net.au
>>>>> http://aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs
>>>>
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>>
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