[Xastir] Using time field data in Xastir objects plus trail colour

[tbaggett at jump.net]

From: Gerry Creager N5JXS 
> There's been a lot of anguish about this on the APRS sig and the 
> strong opinions of some of the scions of this aspect of the 
> hobby that, well, thanks to the 'tactical' nature of APRS, 
> timestamping them when received is good enough.

Well, I absolutly disagree with them. Timestamping packets when they were received and therefore ignoring the embedded NMEA timestamp has caused me a lot of issues in tracking balloons. Every year, the balloon trails appear to zig-zag across the US because the APRS posits are received out of order. The tracks end up looking more like some kind of string art.

If the scions think this is acceptable, then great. One of the big advantages of open-source software is that if you disagree with them, you have the option to modify the software yourself.

The real curious bit of this whole thing is that our balloons transmit every six minutes, and we often see posits that are 12 and sometimes 18 minutes old (or older). I suspect their paths are relayed too many times.

73,
Tim
Austin, TX