Fill-in Digipeater

Before putting a FILL-IN digi on the air, please check with others in the area to confirm whether or not a FILL-IN digi will benefit the overall wellbeing of the APRS network. In most cases, a FILL-IN digi is not necessary.

1. If you find that a FILL-IN digi is necessary, please follow these instructions: The WIDEn-N paradigm settings are an attempt to optimize the APRS network using the currently available hardware. There are certainly better ways to build an APRS network, but until we can get the hardware needed to do the job in place, the NWAPRS group is suggesting that these settings be used.

The fill-in digipeater alias should be set to WIDE1-1, we still have access to all those fill-in digipeaters that are needed. This way any tracker using a path of WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 will be digipeated by a nearby home station or fill-in digi and then propagated to the mountaintop digipeaters. Note, If the mountaintop digipeater also hears the same WIDE1-1 packet, it will also respond and propagate the packet around the system.  A properly configured mountaintop digi that hears a WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 packet and digipeats it, then a brief moment later hears a packet from the same tracker digipeated by a home or fill-in digi will NOT retransmit that packet.

This is where the real "magic" of the new WIDEn-N paradigm happens.

To make the change to the paradigm settings, you simply need to change the digi alias to WIDE1-1

In the Kantronics TNCs, it is suggested that you enable that support by using the following commands:

BLT 1 E 00:30:00
LT 1 !4720.20N112320.45W#PHG5660/W1 Fill-In SouthBend K7GPS       (the "1" will make a green star with 1 in it, for Fill-in digi)
                                                                                                                       (Geocoord format is DDMM.mm that's tenths of minutes, not seconds)
LTP 1 APN382 VIA WIDE2-1      (modify for your version KPC-3: 3=KPC-3     82=eprom version 8.2)
UIDIGI ON WIDE1-1
DIGIPEAT ON
UIFLOOD % (disabled)
UITRACE % (disabled)
MYALIAS % (disabled)

TH-D7a W1 Fill-In  SouthBend

TM-D700 W1 Fill-In  SouthBend  K7GPS

For non-Kantronics TNCs that do not have a UIDIGI routine, simple WIDE1-1 support can be enabled by: MYALIAS WIDE1-1

2. Before activating a FILL-IN digi, please consider this: SHOULD I?

"If you're not really sure, and aren't approaching this in the sense of an experiment you'd understand the results of -- likely No.

One should understand the potential negative effects of adding unnecessary digipeaters to a single shared channel APRS data network running at 1200 Baud first.   . . ."


Steve/wa8lmf has a good, albeit meaty for a newcomer, page on Digipeating http://www.wa8lmf.net/ DigiPaths/ including one nice example of how a path may work
http://www.wa8lmf.net/ DigiPaths/NNNN-Digi-Demo.htm
(though there is another I'm casually attempting to find again that shows other aspects)
However this doesn't really address whether to make a fill-in digi or not.