[Xastir] Please consider ...

[Joseph M. Durnal]

When I first started using APRS, I was a bit of a path abuser, that
was before someone took the time to explain how it worked.

A wide1-1 packet from my station can relay off of 4 digipeaters, that
is why I don't use it from my fixed station.  WIDE2-1 works well for
me, 2 digis often hear me, one in Virginia and one in Maryland.  The
local Maryland digi that I hit is in an area that could lose power
during this winter event.  But several other Maryland digis can hear
the Virginia digi that can hear me, but want to make sure the packets
get back to MD, hence the MD2-2.  Sure, the WIDE2-2 works fine, but my
packets are probably being heard on wide digis in Ohio, Tennessee, NY,
... you get the picture.

The 20 or so is based on digis that can hear each other.  A couple of
years ago I did some testing on the impact of my packets (late at
night so I wouldn't bother anybody).  3 WIDE hops from my station at 5
watts gets out pretty far.

Sorry to complain, it was probably an e-mail I shouldn't have sent -
just one of those things that was driving me nuts while I was in the
middle of trying to do something (now I have to go over to APRSSIG
with my head hung low and say I'm sorry for something else).

73 de Joseph M. Durnal NE3R



On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Curt, WE7U <curt.we7u at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Feb 2010, Joseph M. Durnal wrote:
>
>> Xastir annoyed me into using a more obnoxious path than I wanted to.
>>
>> I'm probably running an older version, but it seemed to freak out when
>> I used WIDE2-1,MD2-2 and suggested WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2.
>>
>> While both paths would get my packets where I needed them to go, the
>> first path would light up 9 or 10 digipeaters and the second, I lost
>> count after about 20.
>
> There are two things wrong here:
>
> One is that the Xastir code should be working properly off either of
> those *2-1,*2-2 paths without annoying you about your path
> selection.  I can take a look at that bit of code when I have a bit
> of free time.
>
> The second:  Being able to count 20 digipeaters on transmit means
> that the digi's do _not_ have DWAIT set to 0, so are waiting on each
> other before transmitting...  This is not supposed to happen.  They
> are supposed to transmit immediately and all at once.  You ideally
> should get three digipeat slots out of that path, with lots of
> digipeaters transmitting in at least the last two slots (probably
> only one or two digi's repeating you during that first slot).
> Perhaps there are lots of home fill-in digi's that are set up
> improperly, or you have multiple types of digipeater
> firmware/software that don't play well in the system together,
> therefore the "fratricide" that Bob is always talking about as
> beneficial ain't happening.  After looking up that word, "siblicide"
> seems more descriptive of the desired situation, but "fraticide" is
> used in the military and Bob's a Navy guy.
>
> Here's Bob talking about it:
>
> http://www.tapr.org/pipermail/aprssig/2009-October/031823.html
>
> Here's another (near the top):
>
> http://on1gl.dyndns.org:7373/cmd?cmd=READ+OZAPRS+376
>
> --
> Curt, WE7U.                         <http://www.eskimo.com/~archer>
>   APRS:  Where it's at!                    <http://www.xastir.org>
>  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
> Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
> The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"
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