APRS Northern Colorado

[khabuda]

Does anyone use APRS trackers out at Pawnee? I checked APRS.fi and didn't seen any pings out in the grasslands proper, so I don't know what repeaters might be hearing something as small as a < 1 watt beacon. These feel like something I want to try, but I need to invest in another handheld radio before I do.

https://shop.qrp-labs.com/aprs

 

[WillMarchant]

The Yaesu radios with built in GPS/APRS are probably reasonably priced on the used market. And the used Kenwood TH-D74 will probably get reasonably priced after the TH-D75 gets released in January.

It might be worth checking with your local ham radio club(s) to see if somebody wants to bring their radio(s) to a launch to join in the fun. Offer to give the club a talk about modern sport rocketry and then you might be able to find a contact.

 

[cls]

Check out byonics.com for TNCs, if you already have a 2m transceiver.

 

[RocketDestroyer]

As a general rule, most people who are using APRS tracking are not using any digipeaters but directly receive the data from the rocket. Using a digipeater is possible but probably not a good choice. Many trackers update their position every few seconds and if you did this through the digipeater you would flood the system with traffic and make you very unpopular with the other users and the system admins. In fact many digipeaters will lock out any callsign that is beaconing data to frequently. I recommend using an unused simplex frequency instead of the APRS system. Don't forget that using any frequency allocated to Amateur Radio requires a license. For this reason most people are using the license free 900 MHz band.

 

[khabuda]

As a general rule, most people who are using APRS tracking are not using any digipeaters but directly receive the data from the rocket. Using a digipeater is possible but probably not a good choice. Many trackers update their position every few seconds and if you did this through the digipeater you would flood the system with traffic and make you very unpopular with the other users and the system admins. In fact many digipeaters will lock out any callsign that is beaconing data to frequently. I recommend using an unused simplex frequency instead of the APRS system. Don't forget that using any frequency allocated to Amateur Radio requires a license. For this reason most people are using the license free 900 MHz band.

Good call on the system overloading. I'm an extra, but I've only ever worked HF. I've never had a practical use for FM until now, so I have some learning to do.

 

[RocketDestroyer]

Good call on the system overloading. I'm an extra, but I've only ever worked HF. I've never had a practical use for FM until now, so I have some learning to do.

No worries, I mostly do HF as well.

Some years ago now a guy launched a high altitude balloon from Black Rock and had it set to beacon it's position several times a minute on the APRS frequency on 2M. It created quite a mess as it was picked up by digipeaters from Mexico to Canada and they were all trying to forward the position on to other digipeaters. Position packets were flying every which way.

 

[khabuda]

No worries, I mostly do HF as well.

Some years ago now a guy launched a high altitude balloon from Black Rock and had it set to beacon it's position several times a minute on the APRS frequency on 2M. It created quite a mess as it was picked up by digipeaters from Mexico to Canada and they were all trying to forward the position on to other digipeaters. Position packets were flying every which way.

I have what is probably a dumb question, but for a simplex connection to a base station, can you still use the APRS tracking device to chirp out it's GPS info to my base station? I was thinking about getting like an AnyTone or something to test it. I'm getting the vibe that I should probably just pony up for a purpose built tracker like the featherweight. I have been trying to make the egg tracker work, but I have tried 2 receivers now and neither of the RF modules light up on RX.

 

[WillMarchant]

Yes, pick an unused frequency and you should be fine for simplex. I think the ARRL band plans https://www.arrl.org/band-plan are a good place to start.

 

[cls]

No worries, I mostly do HF as well.

Some years ago now a guy launched a high altitude balloon from Black Rock and had it set to beacon it's position several times a minute on the APRS frequency on 2M. It created quite a mess as it was picked up by digipeaters from Mexico to Canada and they were all trying to forward the position on to other digipeaters. Position packets were flying every which way.

APRS does not have to work like that. The idiot should have set the path to WIDE1-1. What's that? RTFM. http://www.aprs.org/doc/APRS101.PDF

for a simplex connection to a base station, can you still use the APRS tracking device to chirp out it's GPS info to my base station? I was thinking about getting like an AnyTone or something to test it.

Yes, of course

Personally I do not recommend the Anytone 878 for analog APRS. I can't get it to do what I want.