aprs-appleton-wi-to-traverse-city-mi-round-trip
A recent visit to see Jane (kd8krs) near the Traverse City, MI area gave me a chance to test my dedicated APRS radio and antenna. It also gave me the chance to document APRS coverage in general in eastern Wisconsin, western lower peninsula of Michigan and the southern route of the upper peninsula of Michigan. This was done transmitting at 60 watts and the radio on for the entire trip. The antenna was a roughly 4 db gain antenna. Future tests will be at the low power setting (25 watts).
So of what practical use is APRS? Well, for one, the National Weather Service is encouraging SkyWarn severe weather spotters to run APRS. It would be nice for them to be able to see what coverage they have during activations. It would also be nice for them to know exactly where we are when we make reports. But that’s awful expensive to implement for maybe a couple of transmissions a year. Of more daily use is the ability for loved ones to track me. For example, my fiance’ was able to track me while I drove from Appleton, WI to the Traverse City, MI area and back. She could see when I was near EchoLink repeaters. And she could communicate with me through her computer linked to those ham radio repeaters through the EchoLink network. That was so nice! It is nice to be able to just check http://APRS.FI , put in AB9NN-9 for the call sign and see exact positions. How soon will he get here? How is the trip going? What speed is he going? Etc….
I was disappointed in the coverage from Escanaba, MI to Manistique, MI. I had thought that the path settings that I had set (WIDE 1-1, WIDE 3-3) would have given the radio the capability to make enough hops from digipeater to digipeater and to eventually find an iGate. But I guess there were not enough people running mobile digipeaters as my car’s radio functions as.
The Tiny Trak4 and the Kenwood TM-271 worked well alongside the Yaesu FT-857d radio and tri-band antenna. It did not seem to damage the receive capability of the FT-857d, which I was afraid of. I will feel better in general if I can achieve the same effective coverage with the lower power setting. Stay tuned to see how that turns out!
Stay radio active!
Jon Kreski, AB9NN-9
http://www.HamRadioResources.com
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