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Hi All,<br>
Further to my previous irritated rant,<br>
<br>
Being retired and somewhat prone to spending more time in the shack
than is good for me, I get to see what is happening on the aprs.fi
screen a fair bit .<br>
<br>
What I have noticed is the almost complete lack of mobile traffic
around Melbourne. In the course of 24hrs their appears to be not
more than around an average of 10-15 mobile stations recorded. Most
of these are regulars going to and from work and are so regular that
if they didn't appear I feel like I should ring them up to see they
are OK. To me this doesn't conflict with my own observations of
lots of periods of quiet on the 2m frequency. The frequency can't be
said to be anywhere near overloaded at the moment. In fact compared
to 2 years ago the traffic appears to be negligible.<br>
<br>
Looking at the stations connected to the T2 servers shows that most
of the VK stations have their filters set for thousands of km. I
don't know if they are putting these to air but it did strike me as
as pretty excessive amount of data. I reckoned I was a bit cheeky in
setting mine to 600km but I wanted to watch a mate who is travelling
around vk3 and a circle of that diameter based on my station just
covered it.. I never did work out how to limit the transmissions on
my RF (using uiview) to just 50km whilst receiving data from 600km
from the T2 servers. Can it be done?<br>
<br>
Like all good amateurs I used the transmission limiting function
built into UIView to limit the number of transmissions to RF sent
per minute so I don't feel my station was causing any grief nor
would it cause any grief by remaining on air as a digi/igate. There
are certainly a significant number of areas ranging from Christmas
Hills to areas of the Yarra Valley that are not covered by the
various "officially sanctioned" repeaters that it services. My fill
in function will not be needed with the provision of the Yarra
Valley Amateur Radio Group fill in digi soon to be on Briarties
Hill. I might add this is thanks to the provision of a couple of
cavity filters from a list member. Looking at aprs.fi I can see that
my station is servicing areas right on the slopes of Mt Dandeniong
where the "officially sanctioned" repeater is obviously shaded.<br>
<br>
<font size="2" face="Arial"><snip> I think if APRS was not
around maybe packet may have died ;-)</font><br>
<br>
As a true packet BBS sysop (I use the term <i>true</i> just to
differentiate from APRS) it is my be belief that true packet is
already dead. What we are seeing are the last dying twitches of what
has been, and still could be, a valuable amateur resource, but it
was made less than a friendly usable service by the afore mentioned
packet police. All you see on packet now is an endless repeat of low
grade "tech topics" and 3 or 4 widely scattered stations flaming
each other at 1200bps. If it wasn't for my last three users I would
chuck it in as a BBS sysop. <br>
<br>
My personal opinion is that the packet demise was caused by
excessive "policing" by organisations that felt the dire need to
over regulate the operation of the system. All it really did was
stifle the technical innovation and user interest that would have
moved the packet system into the 21st century.. .Let's hope we are
not seeing the same thing happening to APRS. The current packet
replacement, the BPQ BBS system, is a step in the right innovation
direction but it has become an internet service not a ham radio
service.<br>
<br>
I don't think anyone wants to see chaos on the APRS frequencies but
perhaps a little bit of reasoned thought and coercion rather than
"orders" might work better. Even a bit of open discussion on this
forum rather than the operation of a secret committee behind closed
doors would help. Who appointed the igates, and what are the
technical reasons for the selection are a couple of questions that
spring to mind. Reading the regs I didn't find anything that said I
must blindly operate my station in accordance with instructions from
the secret seven. <br>
<br>
Heaven forbid, perhaps we might have a bit of technical and policy
information and reasoning disseminated on here so that people know
what is happening in the APRS halls of power.<br>
<br>
There are areas my system services in the Yarra Valley that are not,
and cannot be, serviced by the current repeater system. I will
become redundant as a digi for this purpose with the provision of
the Briarties Hill Digi and will then gracefully retire taking all
applause and acclaim for my efforts off stage, and not "on air", in
my usual modest fashion.<br>
<br>
Regards Tony VK3API<br>
your humble serf<br>
touching forelock <br>
with left hand<br>
and bowing deeply:-))<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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