Quoting Bob Stewart bob@evoria.net:
--- Robert Bruninga bruninga@usna.edu wrote:
You don't need anything but a 2m radio and a TNC. No special software. No special hardware, no satellite predictions, and no time consuming operating.
Bob can you or anyone tell me if there are software TNCs for soundcards out there? I know almost nothing about APRS or even where to turn to get useful information. Unfortunately, buying a TNC is simply not going to happen at this time. I am a Linux user.
Bob - AE6RV
Hey, Bob:
I'm a Linux user, too. You're in luck: the xastir program is one of the best for APRS, and it runs under X11. Any post Pentium III machine with a sound card can do the demodulating of 1200 AFSK pretty easily. There is ax.25 packet built into many kernels as an option, and there are a good number of possibilities for decoding the audio. So with a bit of Linux hacking and the cheapest of all 2m ht's, you can have a great APRS station.
When I last set up a Linux machine to do this, most of the demodulators were not user-space; in the Windows world, they are. I'm not sure if that's changing in Linux these days.
As it happens, I just installed Ubuntu 7.10 on a new machine at work and noticed the raft of ham radio applications that are available with this distro. I look forward to the day that phaseIV_beacon_demodulator is among them!
73, Bruce VE9QRP