VOICE REPEATER FREQUENCY OBJECTS: . For facilitating communiations (especially for first-responders, visitors and travelers), local APRS digipeaters provide locally recommended voice repeater frequencies to mobile users. . The left side of the D700 display above and the D7 screen to the right shows the local Frequency object recommended for this area. . Since Jan-07 we have been encouraging this Local Info Initiative to get not only the recommended voice repeater object on the air, but also all other RF assets of value to the traveler such as the local IRLP, EchoLink, and Winlink frequencies, or NET times or meetings in progress, etc as shown here.

Notice how the IRLP and ECHOLINK nodes identify not only their node numbers and callsigns, but also their Tone, Range and status. (Bsy, Rdy, Lnk etc)... By pressing the OK button to see the POSIT screen, you can see that the Echolink node is 17.1 miles to the Southwest.

APRS is a two-way local Information Distribution and Communication System
(not just a vehicle tracking system). See APRS misconceptions!
The objective is Human-to-human local real-time info and communications! .

TRACKERS ARE TWO-WAY-TOO: . Even transmit-only APRS trackers should be configured to facilitate two-way human communications. This is done by always using a transceiver and tuning the RECEIVER to a desired voice communication calling channel. . Then placing this frequency information into the beacon text of the tracker. . This way, all who see the tracker can also establish contact with the operator. . Often this can simply be the Voice Alert frequency.

APRS IS NOT JUST VEHICLE TRACKING: APRS was invented back in the 80's as a universal local tactical info exchange channel designed to inform all users of everything going on on Ham radio in the surrounding local area in real time via short beacon packets. Vehicle position packets were only a subset added in the 90's when GPS became plentiful. We assumed that local frequency information would appear on APRS mobile displays. . APRS is all about exchanging local info and facilitating communication between users. . Knowing the local recommended frequency is very important to travelers. . On the other hand, these radios make excellent data entry devices at special events too. (and not just position!). See D7 data entry at a scout event.

Messaging: Don't overlook that these radios can also send and receive messages between mobiles or HT's anywhere in the world. They can even be used to send Email as shown below. . Just press the MSG button, select INPUT on the MSG Menu, enter EMAIL as the address, and make the first text of the message be an email address followed by your message. . In the example below, an EMAIL to A3XYZ@AMSAT.ORG says OK in OceanCity with HT & whip!. .

If your email is digipeated, then you will see MY MESSAGE flashed on the screen indicating success.

RECOMMENDED REPEATER FREQUENCEIS: . We have seen steady growth since this concept began. The latest sample on 3 April 2008 is at 255 on 2 meters. I think the 323 count in January had some errors and without that data point, the curve is a nominal growth curve. . To see the progress we are making in each band segment on this initiative, see these links:

TINY WEB PAGES: When the Kenwood D7 and D700 APRS mobiles came out in 1998 that could display this info directly on the radio front panel, we called this info Tiny-Web-Pages. See the TWP paper presented at the year 2000 DCC. . The intent was to have all local ham radio activities of immediate local interest show up on these radios to inform mobiles in real time about evertyhing going on in ham radio around them. . An APRSdata.exe program was written that could be run on someone's PC which would then transmit to the front panel of all local radios, information on everything such as WX, Satellites, DX, traffic, Nets, Meetings and so forth. But as APRSdos became less used, and follow-on APRS clones focused too much on only vehicle tracking, most users these days have not seen these other applications for pushing local information to mobiles in the area. I expect to see lots more than just tracker callsigns show up on my radio. Some examples:

For NETS, use the "/N" NTS symbol and for meetings and HAMfests, use the "/E" EYEBALL symbol.

THE LOCAL INFO INITIATIVE: This web page intends to highlight this new initiative to get back some of this original APRS functionality. In particular, the display of local voice repeaters to mobile travelers in new areas such as shown above. The display at the top of this page is what flashes on the front panel for 10 seconds when the packet is received. If the driver does not happen to see this display, then the Repeater will show up as an object on the radio's STATION list as shown to the right on a D700:

In this case, the newer 146.76 repeater has appeared on the list and the older repeater from the previous town is going down the list. Of course, usually it is much further down the list than shown here. When the user sees one of these repeater objects in his STATION list he can know that he is in DIRECT range of that repeater and he can select it to see any other amplifying information such as tone, range, nets and meeting times.

FREQUENCIES ON STATION LIST on the D710: . In the next photo to the right, the new D710 even has a column on the station list for displaying the operating frequency if it is included in the station's packet. In this case, the first three are Local Repeater Objects, but the first one of those is a cross-band repeater, so both the output frequency (object name) and input frequency can be shown. . The last two stations on the list are another D710 and D7 simply showing their current operating frequency.

When an object is selected as shown below left, the split frequency cross band repeater example above shows on a D710 display below (complements of AB9FX). His example shows "233.6 Hz" instead of the more compact recommended "T233 RXXm" tone and range.

. .

The yellow D700 screen on the right above shows an example of the correct final format, though it does not use the 3rd line of 8 characters to also include the club meeting dates. Note also that TONE is now Tnnn and typical useable range is R33m in this case.

PHILOSOPHY: It is very important for all users of APRS to understand the details and purpose of this local info system. And the most important aspect of this system is the word LOCAL, that is, the packet announcing such a voice repeater is seen DIRECT ONLY in no other area then the local DIRECT coverage area of the repeater itself. It violates the principle of this concept if these repeater objects are seen in areas where the repeater cannot be immediately worked DIRECT.

FREQ SPEC: . This is all just part of the APRS Frequency Specification that encourages the addition of FREQUENCY information in all position packets of significance to improving user-to-user communications. See the AFRS Freq-Spec.

WHICH REPEATERS: The first concept is that very few of the 10's of thousands of voice repeaters should even be considered to be announced on APRS. If more than one repeater in an area is announced, then the value of the system is diminished. We end up with nothing more than a repeater directory on the air which is displaying too-many repeaters in any given area to have any idea which one is the best for the APRS Traveler. In any given area there is usually one-and-only-one generally recommended repeater for the long haul and through traveler. That is usually the repeater with the highest probability of finding someone at all hours. ONLY those such repeaters (and/or known APRS dominated voice repeaters) should be indicated on APRS.

KEEP IT LOCAL! The second concept is that the packet simply should only cover the same area as the useble area of the voice repeater. And the packet should be originated at an APRS digipeater so that the packet does not collide with any other packet on the air. The digipeater can hear everything on the APRS channel, and it will only originate this info packet when the channel is otherwise clear. This is why this local info can be added at no cost to the network. See the list of APRS coordianators.

FORMATS: The New-N Paradigm includes the details on how to set up these repeater info packets as objects in the BeaconText of a New-N Paradigm DIGIPEATER. The exact format was derived after extensive discussion and testing, with the displays of the D700 and D7 and HAMhud for best appearance on the front panel. Using those recommendations, the packets will only be seen locally and there will be no digipeats and no collisions with local traffic. Only THREE settings in each digipeaeter are needed:

BEACON EVERY 10 . . . . . . .(every 10 minutes)
UNPROTO APN383 . . . . . . . (For a KPC-3+ version 8.3. Note, no hops!)
BTEXT ;FFF.FFxyz*111111zDDMM.hhN/DDDMM.hhWrAAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCC....

FINDU.COM Workarounds: FINDU.COM has two limitations that limits the flexibility in finding unique "xyz" discriminators for your repeater. First, FINDU.COM does not distinguish between upper and lower case, and second, it does not plot the positions of objects that use the "+" in the object name. One good character for "xyz" for (-) offset repeaters is the "-". But for + offset repeaters, using the + character will cause the repeater to not be plotted on FINDU.COM (though it does list it).

The AAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBCCCCCCCC free-text field can actually be 37 bytes long, but only the first 20 bytes are visibile on the D7 and Hamhud (without scrolling) and only the first 28 bytes are visible on the D700. . Further, when these packets first come in, they are flashed on the radio in the indicated 10x10x8 three line format. So it is best to meet these word boundaries for best display on the mobiles. The following are my recommendations for the free-text fields in descending priority order. ("_" denotes a SPACE):

First line (10 bytes AAAAAAAAAA):