[Xastir] More system questions

[Jim Tolbert]

Thanks Tom....  Yes... We live in the undeveloped boonies.  But then, we 
like it that way <grin>.

The one digipeater that is in out county is AAOKU-WL and 4min.  What 
does that tell us?

Thanks ........... jt

Tom Russo wrote:
> 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)
>
>   

-- 
Jim & Peggy Tolbert

RiverRidge at CenturyTel.net