[Xastir] Wx Alerts

[Tom Russo]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 12:04:08PM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <kf4lvz at yahoo.com> flavor, containing:
> --- On Mon, 1/17/11, Tom Russo wrote:
> 
> > > > Google "APRS Sea of Blue" for a good example of
> > how much screaming over
> > > > data injected into APRS-IS there has been.
> > > 
> > > Hmmm.? I was at the receiving end of that
> > one...? It resulted in the creation of Firenet, where
> > we _encourage_ injection of such objects.
> > 
> > It'd be cool if someone would put up a wxsvr equivalent
> > with the "liberal"
> > gating policy, and gate to firenet...
> > 
> > I miss those wx alerts.
> 
> I used to depend on those a lot when I lived in Atlanta.  The thunderstorm  watches and warnings were handy for when I was out and about.  Sometimes the warning showed up before my NOAA radio beeped.
> 
> 
> One would have to wonder if there was a way to limit the distance that the alerts propagated on the network and over the air.  I mean it's APRS, position and time are available so surely it can be filtered in some way.

Well, propagating on APRS-IS is always global.  But one can filter what one
receives from it, and choose wisely whether to gate something to RF.

I think that IGate policies aren't always chosen well.  Several IGates in 
my state (all of which are long gone) used to gate every WX alert in 
this and the three neighboring states to something like 3 or 4 hops.  The result
was that some folks began to view the WX alerts as nothing but QRM, because
it was rarely of any value locally. 

Sane IGate choices (gating only NWS alerts for the local area, and 
gating them on RF only locally (e.g. few hops), for example) would fix a lot 
of that.  There are parameters in javAPRSSrvr to make just such choices.  But
a lot of folks just use normal APRS clients as IGates, and some of those aren't
as configurable.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."