... went outside and it did popup with one person on the list when i hit beacon.

The BCON button is your XMIT button, and what you hear and what goes into the list is independent of that. Rubber ducks suck. In Japan, hardly anyone uses VHF, so the rubber duck (in my opinion) is optimized for UHF...

just went outside....heard 5 stations in about 15 min. do i have to have the radio on 144.39 to use aprs?

Yes. Band A is usually left permanently on 144.39, and then the Band B can be used for VHF or UHF voice comms for normal ham radio. Since the radio is full duplex, then if your favorite voice repeaters are on UHF, then APRS can run without interruption on band A while you are talkin gon band B.

But if band B is also on 2m voice, then when you are yacking, you are blocking your own receipt of APRS. And if you set the beacon to automatic transmit, then your voice band B receiver will be muted during those 1 sec xmissions.

But do not turn down the volume on band A! Mute the packet racket instead by setting CTCSS 100. This way, you dont hear anything on band A, but it can still be used by anyone to give you a VOICE CALL on 144.39 PL 100. Its an-always-there contact capability no matter what you are doing with voice on band B. This is called VOICE-ALERT.

A side benefit is that it also acts like a proximity detector. That is, if anyone else is running VOICE ALERT (CTCSS 100) then if they get within SIMPLEX range of you, then you will hear their packets once a minute or so, alerting you that someone is IN RANGE, and IS LISTENING on 144.39 with CTCSS 100 for a call!

Please see www.aprs.org/VoiceAlert3.html

Bob, WB4aPR

On 12/11/2010 10:13 AM, Bob Bruninga wrote:

...

...

oh, boy, got a thd72a.... I thought I would give the aprs a try. I put my callsign in. but have no idea what to do next.

There are only a few more things you need to do to start viewing Ham radio around you:

1. Set Band A to 144.39 (in N.America)
2. Push the TNC key to turn on the TNC
3. Be sure you can hear packets (may need a good location or antennna)

Then leave the radio on for 10 minutes. If your list does not begin to fill with everything going on around you in ham radio then wait 30 minutes and you should at least see what is going on in your region. (those are standard APRS refresh times). If APRS is working in your area as an information resource, then you should be able to see what is going on.

Press the LIST button and you will see callsigns and local objects and frequencies. The list is 100 deep, but it is also 9 pages wide. Use the LEFT-RIGHT buttons on the joystick to navigagte the WIDTH of these pages, and use the UP/DN joystick buttons to go though the depth of the list.

Oh, to make the list more visible, press and hold the LIST key. This will display 5 lines per screen, instead of 3.

The STATION LIST is the left column of the columns below. If it is in 3-station mode it only shows calls. But if it is in 5 line mode, it also shows the station TYPE. But HOLDING the list key another second will add DATE heard. Here are all the other 9 pages (COLUMNS) of info per station:

STN | TYPE |1st20|2nd20|ICON& |PWR/HGT|GAIN|LAT |PATH LIST|COMMNT|TEXT |TEXT |DIR/DST|CSE/SPD|DIR |LONG|LAST

Hopefully, the default settings will set you up to basically begin receiving data out of the box.

Oh, inorder for the radio to display the DIRECTION and DISTANCE to every item in the list, the radio has to know where it is. Either turn on the internal GPS with the [F] GPS key or enter a position by pressing the POS key.

Now to TRANSMIT your APRS information, there are more decisions to make. TO me, the most important is to have the radio automatically insert your Band-B Voice frequency in your beacon, so people can see wat repeater or channel you are on. This is the APRS menu QSY(FREQ) setting. Set QSY-in-status to ON.

You can set your beacon to AUTO if you are actually outdoors doing something, or just leave it on MANUAL since most of the time an HT in a pocket is not in an ideal antenna location to actually get out. When the HT is in the hand and can see the sky, then each press of the BCON button will transmit. If the local APRS digipeater hears you, the raido willl flash that info and also show you the digipeater that relayed you.

But the fun is SEEING what else is going on. Us the list key and joystick for that. Oh, also, when on the LIST, you can press the MENU key and SORT the list by TIME, by CALL or by DISTANCE. These are very powerful!

Bob, WB4APR

--

Bruce Paige, KK5DO

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