Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Monitoring Frequency in APRS Status Text

From an APRSSIG posting by Bob B.

> on my TinyTrack3.
> I was going to put in that I'm "Monitoring
> 146.520" and have that sent every 4th time.

Please consider putting it into the new APRS frequency format.
That is:

"146.52 MHz listening..."

By putting the freqeuncy as a FIXED field as the first 10 bytes of your position comment in the format "FFF.FFFMHz", then your frequency can be parsed. For example, the new Kenwoods have a TUNE button for one-button tuning to these frequencies.

Please see the web page on FREQUENCY:
http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/localinfo.html

Also please see the Tracker Manifesto:
http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/aprs/TrackerManifesto.doc

You are doing the right thing by publishing in your tracker, the frequency that you are monitoring so that you can be contacted at any time. After all, the tracker is connected to a two-way radio, you may as well be listening for calls on its receiver...

Bob, WB4APR

2 comments:

David K7GPS said...

Further to this, if you have a TM-D710 you can select STATUS TEXT #5 which automatically inserts the B side radio frequency and transmits that at the periodicity you select on the same menu item. This way if you QSY to another freq, the status text changes to indicate the newest freq. This was one item I communicated to Kenwood's wish list for the D700 followon. Maybe others did and it turned into a feature of the radio. Dave/K7GPS

Unknown said...

Do I have to put the frequency string into the POSITION COMMENT or the >STATUS?
Which one will be parsed by the Kenwoods?

73!