[OZAPRS] Foundation licences

[Gerard Hill]

Thanks for all the comments, everyone.

It seems the IGate John is hearing is set up to broadcast any object 
within say 200 km. The mobile F call was in range but is now in VK3.

Looking at the APRS spec, rather than being gated as a position report 
of the form =DDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhW$... a gate can send out an object in the 
form ;OBJECT___*DDHHMMzDDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhW$CSE/SPD/comments...

A position report requires the "from" callsign in the packet to identify 
the object which limits it to 6 characters plus 0-15 SSID.

The object report has a 9 character object field so it is possible to 
have a foundation call with a 1 digit SSID eg. VK1FABC-8. The SSID 
convention of -10 for smart phones does not fit for F calls, unfortunately.

For an object report, the "from" callsign would be the IGate beaconing 
the report (not a foundation call), so that's perfectly legal. The 
foundation call only appears in the "payload" of the packet.

For more reading, here's the obligatory reference:
http://www.aprs.org/APRS-docs/PROTOCOL.TXT

Cheers ... Gerard, VK2IO

On 23/06/2011 7:33 PM, Warren_Brown wrote:
> Hi Gerard,
>
> The 7 letter callsign goes makes it onto the screen as their transmission is
> coming out of an IGATE not direct to RF.
> When stations are transmitted by an IGATE their beacon is a "third party"
> transmission so all of the information is in the payload which only need to
> be ascii characters, whilst the header must meet the AX25 spec's.
> These beacons will have TCPIP in the path.
>
> 73
> Warren
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ozaprs-bounces at aprs.net.au [mailto:ozaprs-bounces at aprs.net.au] On
>> Behalf Of Gerard Hill
>> Sent: Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:15
>> To: Australian APRS Users
>> Subject: Re: [OZAPRS] Foundation licences
>>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> Did you get to the bottom of it?
>> I (for one) am curious how a 7 character callsign can get through on
>> AX.25 packet radio.
>>
>> Cheers ... Gerard, VK2IO
>>
>> On 20/06/2011 5:40 PM, John Simon wrote:
>>> /I am monitoring 145.175 MHz VK2RUW on my computer and have this mobile
>>> stn on the computer screen. /
>>> /
>>> John de VK2XGJ