I did try APRS by radio today at 50 watts, just to see if there was a difference. Not much difference was seen, so it isn't lack of signal but lack of stations relaying signals. Good to know. Now back to "medium" power to avoid overworking the Kenwood TM-D710GA, a radio I really, really like :-)
Yeah, I feel your pain. However as a an owner/operator of several repeaters there are logistical problems to put up something on 2 meters that has more than 5-10 mile simplex range. Also I think most hams feel packet and APRS are too old to be of interest. Not only that, interest on 2M in general has tanked. Traveling and trying to find a QSO on 146.52 or just about any analog 2M repeater is really fruitless, especially for strangers.
Thank you for being a repeater owner! That's a level of investment in time and money I haven't been able to make.
Is APRS becoming a niche? I guess it always was. When I look at a map of active stations on APRS, it feels like a bunch of die-hard APRS users. I haven't seen younger hams take it up.
Packet isn't dead, at least not in emergency service. Winlink seems to be holding its own in that realm.
I hate to think 2 meters is dying but I have seen that same decline in activity of repeaters and on simplex. I note that 146.52 usage seems to vary by community. Around Portland and Vancouver, it is actively used by local hams. Up in the Seattle area I rarely hear any calls. I monitor .52 whenever I'm outside the range of my home repeater.
Utah's metro area has better coverage, but I feel is under utilized. APRS does show up in a lot of new dmr gear, but that gear often doesn't beacon well.
Then there is Satellite APRS, I really want to figure out how to do that, but there are slightly different frequencies for that.
But we live in a magic age. Soon it seems to me we could be seeing sound card software, tablets, and single board computers redefining how we do a lot of these things... At least I hope so...
I did try APRS by radio today at 50 watts, just to see if there was a difference. Not much difference was seen, so it isn't lack of signal but lack of stations relaying signals. Good to know. Now back to "medium" power to avoid overworking the Kenwood TM-D710GA, a radio I really, really like :-)
Yeah, I feel your pain. However as a an owner/operator of several repeaters there are logistical problems to put up something on 2 meters that has more than 5-10 mile simplex range. Also I think most hams feel packet and APRS are too old to be of interest. Not only that, interest on 2M in general has tanked. Traveling and trying to find a QSO on 146.52 or just about any analog 2M repeater is really fruitless, especially for strangers.
Thank you for being a repeater owner! That's a level of investment in time and money I haven't been able to make.
Is APRS becoming a niche? I guess it always was. When I look at a map of active stations on APRS, it feels like a bunch of die-hard APRS users. I haven't seen younger hams take it up.
Packet isn't dead, at least not in emergency service. Winlink seems to be holding its own in that realm.
I hate to think 2 meters is dying but I have seen that same decline in activity of repeaters and on simplex. I note that 146.52 usage seems to vary by community. Around Portland and Vancouver, it is actively used by local hams. Up in the Seattle area I rarely hear any calls. I monitor .52 whenever I'm outside the range of my home repeater.
Utah's metro area has better coverage, but I feel is under utilized. APRS does show up in a lot of new dmr gear, but that gear often doesn't beacon well.
Then there is Satellite APRS, I really want to figure out how to do that, but there are slightly different frequencies for that.
But we live in a magic age. Soon it seems to me we could be seeing sound card software, tablets, and single board computers redefining how we do a lot of these things... At least I hope so...
I feel like I'm so far behind on all the new technology! Having said that, I'd like to try APRS on 6 meters. That's on my list for 2023 :-)