Good Day All:
I am a newcomer to Sat Comm and began with APRS activity through ISS. I was successful with my mediocre set-up of J-pole old rg58 TM-241 and UISS w/soundcard and Orbitron. I pretty much understand the digi and gate topology and use of the new paradigm WIDEn-N but have a question.
It is very confusing on proper paths and other issues because al ot of information is still online that is quite old and has no date attached.
On the APRS through ARISS site it is suggested that success into the database will be improved by using a path of "via ARISS,SGATE,WIDE"
I have found other info that says: NEVER NEVER NEVER use GATE in aVHF path---
If GATE is used to gate across from VHF to HF then what exactly is SGATE? I cannot seem to find a description of WHAT it means. I see that ISS uses SGATE on its own announcement messages but I see very few uplink messages using it.
Also, if I am only wanting to utilize messages into my current sat footprint, is RFONLY a good path statement?
Is there a current listing of all these somewhere?
I was successful on several occasions now using via RS0ISS-4,SGATE,WIDE so it works but I don't want to be hogging up resources.
Thanks for your patience,
KU8L EN82hi