[OZAPRS] HF APRS and HF Balloon APRS

[vk2ycj at bravo.net.au]

Hello,

The Pico Balloons sent off by Andy VK3YT has been very inspiring to lots
of people - me included.  I'm amazed !

I'm running VHF APRS on 2m in the car and would like to try HF APRS in the
car on 30m.

Later something in a balloon might be fun too.

So, as I understand it, in the car on VHF APRS we use smart beaconing to
keep the resolution of spots up but with minimal packets to prevent VHF
channel congestion.  Correct ?

I'm not sure what HF APRS does in the car - but my guess is that it
reduces the spot resolution to give enough spots to be useful and to
greatly reduce HF channel congestion.  Correct ?  Any other smarts
involved ?

With balloon APRS I assume the beaconing rate is probably set to once
every 5 minutes - for two reasons - to reduce channel congestion and to
preserve battery life.  PIC and Arduino type controllers can be put to
sleep for 4.5 minutes to reduce battery drain to almost nothing - then
woken up to collect the GPS and other data and then used to transmit a
packet - then put to sleep again.  Correct ?  Any other smarts involved ?



Thanks,   Jamie - VK2YCJ