This week I had the chance to follow the learning curve of a quickly developing recently new ham KD8JPW. Jane passed her technician ham radio license exam recently and bought a HT with APRS capability built in. She got it up and running this past week on APRS and I learned quite a bit from the experience.

I was able to track her in her truck via this website: www.FindU.com by just entering her ham radio call sign – KD8JPW. It returned her SSID on the map (KD8JPW-9). I learned that the “-9” indicates that she is mobile. And I found out that she sets-up her call sign inside her radio, and that data gets transmitted along with her GPS coordinates when she transmits.

It was really neat to be able to do this. This first transmission was on a day when the weather was less than perfect and I was worried about her. I was at work one state away. But I was able to quickly access the website and find out what was going on. I could see that she was on her way to work in the morning. Later than day I could see she was on her way to an appointment. I can see how this will be nice when she is on a long trip or out exploring.

Currently I am trying to figure out how to send small text messages to her radio. Haven’t quite got that part figured out yet. I know it’s possible via e-mail or cell phone. I am currently doing research via the internet. Thanks GOOGLE!

So – am I jealous? OH YEAH… she’s got a pretty cool radio. I would like to get my mobile set-up to do APRS, but I need to invest in a GPS unit first and I haven’t done that research yet. If you want to see what you can see on an APRS map, go to Google.com and type “APRS maps” without the quotes. When I mouse over the target icon on Google’s APRS map it displays a vector to the APRS digipeater that received that target’s last transmission. If you click on the target, you can see the position, direction of travel, reported speed and altitude.

OK – enough for the blog for today. I am fighting a nasty head cold… although it gives my ham radio voice that nice deep bass sound…

Stay radio active!

Jon Kreski, AB9NN
http://www.HamRadioResources.com

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