[Xastir] More system questions

[Tom Russo]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 03:37:52PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> 
> 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.

I think I've got all that I can get, since I've already heard from the
digis that are closest to you.  I have a snapshot, it's at
  <http://www.swcp.com/~russo/imgs/wiscsnap.png>

Look at the pale green circles --- they represent the digipeaters at the center
(where the star is) and their advertised ranges.  The southeast portion of
Wisconsin appears saturated with digis with overlapping ranges, but your
western portion is thinner.

It looks like your county is pretty much without a local digipeater at all.
The nearest digis to the location you sent are advertising ranges that 
don't quite cover the distance between your location and theirs.  You might
have trouble hitting those digis during SAR missions, but you'll want to 
try out a tracker in your normal operation area before concluding that.
You could get a single D7 radio, wire it up to a GPS, and use a path like
WIDE2-2 to see if you get digipeated --- you could monitor the whole thing
on findu without having any other infrastructure to see if you're making it
to a digipeater and an Igate.  Not a solid test (you could be reaching a digi
but not an igate), but you could still tell if you're getting digipeated because
the D7 would report when it hears its own packets back.  

If your local infrastructure isn't built up enough then you might need some 
assistance to get a new digi installed nearer to your operations area, or
you could deploy a portable digipeater on missions --- yet another piece of
equipment to purchase and maintain, but perhaps easier than getting a full-time
digi set up so that it reaches where you need it.

Curt likes the idea of using Tracker2 units to deploy a bunch of man-portable
digis into mission areas.  I'm still skeptical, but it could work well.  How's
that going, Curt? (ignoring the fact that Tracker2 is still not ready for
prime time, so doesn't answer Jim's needs yet)

-- 
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