[OZAPRS] HF APRS with an FT 857D

[Ray Wells]

Terry/All,

Terry, thanks for your comments re Igates.

I run both HF and VHF here as well as a satgate (down at the moment 
because I've borrowed the antenna).

My thanks is seeing stations gated by any of the systems I run. APRS is 
my only contribution to AR these days due to the pressure of other 
things such as maintaining 25 acres (slash, grow, slash, grow!) and 24/7 
involvement one way or another as technician/president/presenter for the 
local community radio station.

Regarding the failed antenna, a twenty year old homebrew 3dB stack, it 
happened one day late last week. I wondered why I hadn't heard many 
stations, including the digi just 8km away and just short of optical. 
I've changed to the satgate dipole at 20'as a temporary measure.

Today I took delivery of a 8.5dBi vertical to replace the dead array 
and, weather permitting it will be 50' in the air over the weekend.

To add insult to injury, the MFJ1270BT TNC on the VHF port died Saturday 
night, but I had a spare.

Life's never dull.

Ray vk2tv



On 27/04/11 14:38, Terry Neumann wrote:
> I was hoping all along that there might be a way around around this
> Shaun :-[
>
> I was in the same position about 10 years ago when HF APRS came up for
> consideration. I looked at dedicated HF TNC's but the cost was always
> something of a barrier. It became apparent that one of the kit trackers
> was the least expensive option, and so I settled for a Tiny Track 3.
> These are easy to construct, relatively inexpensive, and you already
> have the necessary cabling to your '857 since it uses the Kantronics DB9
> pin numbering system for the rig connections.
>
> Good luck, with whatever you choose - the HF APRS system in this part of
> the world works very well, thanks in no small part to those who
> generously provide the Igates to make it all possible, often the same
> people who have a VHF igate running at the same QTH. It's a unique
> requirement of the APRS system - one which we should never loose sight of.
>
> 73
> Terry
> VK5ATN
>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:43:28 +1000
>> From: Shaun<shaunbaby at optusnet.com.au>
>> Subject: Re: [OZAPRS] HF APRS with an FT 857D and Kantronics KP3
>> To: Australian APRS Users<ozaprs at aprs.net.au>
>> Message-ID:<201104270543.28962.shaunbaby at optusnet.com.au>
>> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Thanks Terry,
>>
>> This explains a lot, and although not the outcome I was looking for, your help
>> has saved me a lot of time.
>>
>> Anyone got a cheep 300 baud 200 hz modem going?
>>
>> Thanks to all that contributed.
>>
>> 73
>>
>> Shaun VK2XPP-9 for now.
>>
>
>
>
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