APRS for Dummies

Is there an APRS primer out there on how to make it happen?

I understand the concept but as I read through the threads, I have more questions than answers.

Webb said:

Is there an APRS primer out there on how to make it happen?

I understand the concept but as I read through the threads, I have more questions than answers.

Click to expand...

Webb, the VAF APRS forum is about the best collection of info I've seen regarding aviation APRS. Be sure you read the stickies at the top of the APRS forum:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=104

You might find useful my article about the installation of APRS in my RV-6:

http://thervjournal.com/tracker.htm

Submit your list of questions, we'll work our way through them and get you up to speed.

By the way, I moved this thread to the APRS forum.

Thanks Sam...

.....for the article you wrote in the new Kitplanes magazine....very well done.

BTW, when I visited www.aprs.fi, There was only one page of vehicles being tracked, including boats and ships. Are there only that few or are there more pages that I couldn't find?

Thanks,

Thanks Sam

Sam Buchanan said:

Webb, the VAF APRS forum is about the best collection of info I've seen regarding aviation APRS. Be sure you read the stickies at the top of the APRS forum:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=104

You might find useful my article about the installation of APRS in my RV-6:

http://thervjournal.com/tracker.htm

Submit your list of questions, we'll work our way through them and get you up to speed.

By the way, I moved this thread to the APRS forum.

Click to expand...

PM for you

pierre smith said:

.....for the article you wrote in the new Kitplanes magazine....very well done.

BTW, when I visited www.aprs.fi, There was only one page of vehicles being tracked, including boats and ships. Are there only that few or are there more pages that I couldn't find?

Thanks,

Click to expand...

Thanks, Pierre!

The one page you saw was probably it. The hand wringing about frequency congestion seems to me to be a bit overblown--there just aren't very many mobile trackers in use at any one time in one particular locale. I think the network has a lot of capacity that is still unused.

On our breakfast flight this morning there were two aircraft with trackers and we saw no congestion issues, nearly all our packets made it through the system:

http://aprs.fi/?lat=35.4875&lng=-86.4851&mt=p&z=11&timerange=43200

There are many more fixed stations than mobiles, most of them are weather stations that only transmit every few minutes. As long as we use common sense with our tracker configurations we should have reliable service for many years to come while being good stewards of the network.