Hi John!
Have you tried editing the status text field on an APRS-ready HT or mobile radio? Lots of keypresses to make the change. It would be easier for someone using software like UISS to type a few characters in that field. For someone with a TH-D72, you could end up with 20 to almost 40 keypresses to change a call sign in a status text field. It is similar for those using a mobile radio like a TM-D710G, where you press buttons on the microphone's DTMF keypad to make those changes. It is much easier for the users of the APRS-ready transceivers to pull a call sign from a listing, and in a few keypresses send a message to that call sign, instead of editing the status text to do the same thing.
I know of one west-coast station that uses the status text to make contacts with other stations. I don't think that station is using a radio like a TM-D710G to work the passes. For the rest of us with the APRS-ready transceivers, we use the messages back and forth. We can see when a station sends a message to another station, and can quickly make calls with messages compared to the longer time needed to edit a status text field to do the same thing.
Unfortunately, the Kenwood and Yaesu APRS-ready transceivers faithfully implement APRS, where UISS deviates from it slightly for messaging. UISS allows the user to disable the use of ACK packets when sending messages. UISS will send an ACK packet, if an incoming message requests it, but at least those users have the option of not using ACKs on their own messages to others. Now if the APRS standard provided a way for ACKs to be optional, and Kenwood and Yaesu implemented this change (i.e., a menu option where the ACK requirement for outgoing messages could be disabled)... I wonder who could propose changes to APRS... :-)
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/ Twitter: @WD9EWK or http://twitter.com/WD9EWK
On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 2:26 PM John Brier via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
Thanks for explaining Bob. I wasn't clear on just how much "heavier" APRS packets were.
It would definitely take a concerted effort to get people to use STATUS messages more.
73, John Brier KG4AKV