[Xastir] An Xastir story

[John Ronan]

>
> Nice story. any photos? I always like to see photos of the
> tool/hardware in operation.

> I was involved with a hillwalking festival at the weekend in Ireland,
> which was tracking walkers, some being licensed operators.
>
Many thanks for coming down to help Bernard, always appreciated.
> The "non-licensed" people on the walk very impressed that a) people
> were giving up their time to do it, and b) that there was useful
> technology involved in amateur radio ("i thought you just listened to
> ships" someone said to me).
>
> Its a nice feeling when your hobby has an actual useful purpose.

I'm still shattered after the weekend and I wasn't even walking.
I have some pictures of various parts of the weekend available here.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jpronans/2007GalteeWalkingFestival

We had two Mobile OT2 Digipeaters (EI8EPB-2 and EI3RCW-1), 5 portable  
trackers (two stopped working)


We were also using this weekend to 'test' some software we are  
developing with the South East Mountain Rescue Association, its is  
only 'pre-alpha' (and it showed at various times) but they were quite  
happy and asked us back for another trial later in the year.  They  
are only just getting used to the system themselves (Simoco SRP9130  
Radio's with GPS Microphone). We had 7 SEMRA Radio's out at various  
stages... two of them seemed to be programmed incorrectly and two had  
duff batteries.  They appear as numbers in xastir's map (we were  
making them appear as APRS stations as well).

All in all APRS and xastir made the weekend safer for everyone.

A point of information, the closest 'digi' that would have connected  
us to the rest of the APRS network in EI went down due to a power  
supply failure at some stage on Saturday.  This meant we had our own  
Tactical APRS network up and running independent of any other  
infrastructure.

Regards
de John
EI7IG


--
John Ronan <jronan at tssg.org>, +353-51-302938
Telecommunications Software &  Systems Group,  http://www.tssg.org