[MNAPRS] APRS UHF 446.175

[Doug Reed]

Hi Matt, Bill.

Can you explain why you want to put APRS on 9600 baud UHF?
Where will it come out again?

Have you listened to the APRS Forum from 2016 Dayton Hamvention? It
has been posted on YouTube as Ham Radio Now #255. Bob Bruninga WB4APR
talked for over an hour about APRS. Included was mention of a UHF 9600
backbone they want to build along the Appalachian Trail. But I never
really got an explanation of WHY..... A state-wide backbone for packet
I can understand but a backbone for APRS doesn't thrill me.

During the Q&A, someone complained about 1-way I-gates and APRS
messaging. They were upset that most I-gates are RF-to-Internet-only.
To me that is most reasonable. But if you can find a way to identify
that a mobile station is in your area and an APRS message came off the
APRSIS server for that station, I certainly wouldn't mind if it was
retransmitted on the local APRS frequency. OTOH, I wouldn't want the
I-gate to send ALL APRS messages from the Internet back out on local
RF. That would be a huge waste of air-time, in my opinion......

But if you wanted to use a UHF frequency for APRS reverse I-gate, that
might be an option. I don't know if it would actually be useful to
anyone, but you could try it. But I would recommend software that
would combine multiple beacons into one transmit string because the
turn-around time of most 9600 baud radios is lousy and the actual data
thru-put is much less than 8X faster.....

One other thing that was mentioned and explained was APRS "Voice
Alert." This was new to me, but I don't normally read any APRS forums
and I haven't listened to the APRS frequency recently to know if
anyone is doing it locally. If anyone wants to know what it is about,
get the video from YouTube.....

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.