Back on APRS

After a little bit of a delay, I am back on APRS. APRS is an acronym for the Automatic Packet Reporting System. I've probably been on APRS off and on for about nine years. Nine years ago is about the time that Kenwood introduced their TH-D7A handie-talkie (HT). It was fairly groundbreaking at the time, and until recently was the only HT that could do APRS, let alone packet radio. Around the time of the 2008 Dayton Hamvention, however, Yaesu (Vertex Standard) announced the VX-8R, that promises APRS and packet capability.

Well, anyway, I was an early adopter of the TH-D7A, and used it quite a bit when I first acquired it. A few years later, Kenwood indicated that they were introducing a "G" version of the TH-D7A. I'm not sure what the letter "G" meant, but this new radio added some incremental features to the APRS capabilities. One of the more notably features, if I remember correctly, was the ability to do 9600 bps APRS and packet. Around the same time Kenwood said that for a fee, owners of the non-"G" version could ship their radios to a Kenwood Service Center for a firmware upgrade. I did not do that right away. I probably waited a year or so, but I eventually sent it off. I continued to use the HT off and on, but at some point my usage declined and the radio stayed in my carrying case. When I decided to start using it again, I first discovered that all of the batteries that I had wouldn't hold a charge anymore, so I had to buy a new battery. Sometime after buying the new battery, I used that radio and an Arrow Antenna to make my first contact through the AO-51 satellite. I talked about this in an earlier post. A little more time passed and the radio itself developed a problem. Everything was fine except for the display. The display is a dot-matrix type of display, but it was showing strange characters. They were characters from the ASCII set, but nonetheless I could not understand why they were there, and I tried everything to correct the problem including a full reset. At that point, I decided to sell the radio on Ebay. I fully disclosed its problems and the radio was sold.

Meanwhile, I had purchased a Kenwood TM-D700A at the Dayton Hamvention, I believe. I had every intention of installing the radio in my car, but that never happened and the radio never left the box. I eventually sold it on Ebay.

This spring, however, I was helping my local ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) group, the COARES (Central Ohio ARES), provide communications support for the Tour of the Scioto River Valley (TOSRV). The COARES leaders indicated that APRS would be used this year, and that volunteers would space digipeaters about every two miles along the 100+ mile course (leapfrogging no doubt). I knew that my newer TH-D7A (G)--forgot to mention that I bought this radio brand new to replace my failing TH-D7A--would probably have problems in the hilly areas of southern Ohio. I decided that I would buy a Kenwood TM-D710A (the successor to the TM-D700) and become active in APRS. So I bought the radio a couple of weeks ago and got it set up last night.

I'm currently operating it as a base station under the callsign of N8OIF-9. You can view my position at the Findu site. The position is slightly off because at the present time, my position is hard-coded into the radio. I'm waiting on a GPS receiver to arrive that should provide better precision.

73

QRZ.com Announces New Call Lookup

I've been visiting QRZ.com quite a bit lately as I look up the callsigns of stations I might try to work on HF. I noticed on their home page tonight that they are announcing a new callsign lookup designed for PDAs and cell phones. I've been looking for such a tool for quite some time. QRZ does have one of the better callsign lookups in my opinion as it allows you to look up non-U.S. stations. Until recently the only callsign lookup that I was aware of that was designed for cell phones was the one introduced by KC8KOD. I applaud KC8KOD for bringing his search to the amateur community, but sometimes the data got rather old. QRZ does update its search every day with data straight from the FCC. I'm not sure what sources it uses for non-U.S. calls.

When I acquired my LG Voyager phone (on Verizon) about a month ago, its full HTML browser was able to display the regular QRZ.com page, but that included pictures and advertisements. I don't need that on my cell phone. I have an unlimited data package, so it's not about the data, but about the time it takes all of that extra information to download and render.

QRZ.com indicates that initially this new search will be free, but will probably be part of its premium subscription service eventually. That's fine with me. It runs about $30 a year. I think I can afford it. They did ask for comments about how the search worked. I noticed what I consider a glitch when looking up club callsigns. I reported that issue in the thread that had been started.

As you may know, I was in the initial phases of developing my own callsign search on the web specifically for cell phones. I will probably abandon most of this now, but in particular I will abandon my attempt to gather the non-U.S. data I was looking for such as Canada, and Australia. I would like to still work on the U.S. search. It gives me the opportunity to learn Visual Basic .NET.

The new QRZ.com search for cell phones and PDAs is at http://www.qrz.com/pcs.