[Xastir] More system questions

[Tom Russo]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 12:30:13PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <archer at eskimo.com> flavor, containing:
> On Wed, 27 Jun 2007, Curt, WE7U wrote:
> 
> > I blew it, those are WinLink stations, not APRS stations.  Try this
> > one instead:
> >
> > <http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/near.cgi?&last=1&rate=1&lat=45.0&lon=-92.4>
> 
> FWIW:  The "CW" stations are citizen's weather stations, which may
> or may not be amateur radio stations (typically not).  Ignore those
> when trying to figure out how many APRS'ers are in your area.
> 
> Also:  People can be attached to the internet without being on the
> radio at all.  Some of the APRS'ers are probably in that mode.  If
> you click on each station and look at the raw packet, if you see
> "TCPIP" or "TCPXX" in the header portion, they are internet-only
> stations.  KC0EPW is in that category.  The header of the packet
> extends to/through the first ':' character.

If you look specifically for digipeaters (six-pointed stars as the symbol)
in the "near.cgi" output you'll get a better feel for the infrastructure
near you.  'Course it's hard to tell really how effectively they cover
your area without knowing details of how they're placed.

You could also set up an Xastir station to listen using an APRS-IS server
(nternet only) fairly quickly, and look for the digis on your map.  To
do this, you'd want to  use a filter that specified "r/45/-92/500" or 
something to give a nice big range of stations near you.  I'm actually 
looking at such a thing right now.  In the few seconds I've been watching,
I see that there are quite a few digipeaters, but they are all advertising
fairly short ranges (through their PHG settings, which may or may not really
indicate their effectiveness, as it's a very crude measure).

I'll take a screen shot of your area viewed in xastir in an hour or so after
I've captured more data.  I'll put it on my web site and post here with the
URL.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick