[Xastir] Newbee question re: Garmin Rino / Cygwin / Xastir and SAR

[Jason Winningham]

On Jun 25, 2007, at 7:25 PM, Jim Tolbert wrote:

> Garmin Rinos within 5 miles of the search incident command would be  
> a workable alternative.

This seems pretty optimistic.  I don't know about the Rinos, but in  
my very limited experience with FRS radios 5mi seems to be a bit much  
for them, unless one is on a mountain and has a straight shot to the  
other.  I would think that the data range would be even less than the  
voice range.

I don't know about Cygwin support for GPSman (again, haven't tried  
that myself), but if Cygwin doesn't work, using the virtual machine  
with VMware player will work.  The VM is noticeably faster, in my  
experience, than Cygwin.


As for a more optimum solution, if the units in the field don't need  
to track other units, a basic HT with an opentracker and GPS would do  
nicely.  Buying new, one could put these together for probably $225 -  
$250 each.

If the units in the field _do_ need to track the others, currently  
the optimum solution is the Kenwood D7 + a mapping GPS.  A bonus in  
using the D7 is that it's a dual band radio, so it could be used for  
voice communications as well as data.  This is a $500+ solution.   
There is a new Opentracker in the works that would do it cheaper, but  
it's not in production yet.

Of course, all these ham radio solutions assume everyone is licensed  
and all that good stuff.  Trackers can be put together on other  
bands, but if the county's radio infrastructure is already limited  
there probably isn't anything left lying around for conversion to  
trackers.

-Jason
kg4wsv