[Xastir] Change to RELAY digipeat function

[Wes Johnston]

Two years ago at DCC I spoke with Shin Aota, _the_ programmer of the d7a
and d700.... and he was very interested in open trac.  One of his
grumblings was that he was out of code space in the d7a, and if he had
the option of opentrac instead of the bulky (code wise) mic-e format, he
could have added more features to the radio.  I don't know how far his
opinions get with kenwood management, but hey, the programmer was very
interested!  Another thing that caught his eye was the support for UTF-8
and therein - kanji. 

Anyone remember the religious war of OT vs APRS from a year ago?  Who
had shorter packets, which could do more.... and it ended with "stay off
144.39".  You wood-a thought aprs was set in stone!  You know, I forgot
to mention back then that NMEA 2.0 wasn't compatible on air with most
APRS (ahem) appliances... we should also keep NMEA 2.0 dumb trackers off
144.39 too!!! [ducking].

Wes

Jeff Barlow wrote:

>James Ewen <jewen at shaw.ca>  wrote:
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>>When did Ham Radio become an all or nothing hobby?
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>I don't know. Have you tried mentioning something like OpenTRAC
>on the big APRS SIG lately? There are folks for whom this is like
>religion. From their point of view it clearly is all or nothing.
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>>Why do we need to have 100% backing from the existing APRS community before 
>>anyone starts playing with different ideas or hardware?
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>Well, as long as we play somewhere other than 144.39, we don't.
>Although, if there are just a few of us, many miles apart, I'm
>not sure there's much point. I'd settle for 10% backing. Hell,
>I'd settle for one or two hams within 100 miles of me who wanted
>to work on it.
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>>Scott Miller N1VG has started working on the OpenTRAC protocol and project 
>>without waiting for general public approval and support. It is possible that 
>>Scott's OpenTRAC may take over and replace the APRS system.
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>It's possible, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Many, many
>folks will never switch until they can buy off the shelf gear,
>with ready made cables, and just plug it in.
>
>My point was that building something (like OpenTRAC) is the sort
>of thing I know how to do. Convincing manufacturers to build
>compatible products and/or talking the appliance operators into
>building their own rigs, is beyond my skill set.
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>>If that happens, will there still be people standing on the sidelines 
>>complaining that there is a better way, but still not doing anything?
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>I guess I just don't much like beating my head against a brick
>wall.
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>>Kudos to Scott for remembering that Ham Radio is about experimentation.
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>I too applaud his efforts. 
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