Hi Ed and all. True enough CA may be California or Canada. BUT National geographic designation is not specified, or else the prefix code could be US or CA. In that case, position eliminates the ambiguity. For "state" subdivisions, Canadian provinces are used, i.e., PQ, BC, NB, etc. I don't recall a conflict in that case. National qualifiers are nice to have but not essential, and the tag size is limited. The modified CLLI method works but assumes you know the cities and codes of surrounding areas. I find the four character city code mnemonics easier to recognize that the more cryptic FAA airport identifiers as well.
My goal was to organize geographically and alphabetically. I use a spreadsheet or database to organize the info and generate a table for the rig memory manager program. Some other additions I could wish for (given more tag space) would be county, region, or segment of journey mapped to a travel route. In some instances, given repeater coverage, counties may be a better choice than city. On the road, cities and towns are more frequently signed, so I opted out of the county idea. Even better, a "smart" radio might be able to store a repeater database and allow the user to select as desired or track with a GPS. Some online resources include repeater lat/lon, so this idea is feasible. FYI, I am not using all the tag space, so the user can add one, two or more qualifiers if the rig permits. And YES, I agree 100%, call sign would be a great "entity" qualifier along with band or frequency, but it does not help sorting out the repeaters that serve a given geographical area. Sometimes a callsign is used on several repeaters, different bands, different locations. Hope that helps. Happy trails es 73 to all de Pete WG2J From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Woodrick, Ed Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 8:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Simplify Abreviations for Alpha Tags As far as I know, there's only one basic convention where you don't end up with a bunch of exceptions. CALLSIGN Even Pete's modified CLLI code has issues, CA is both a state and a country. ZIP Codes can come close, except that no one knows what 23324 is. Airport codes can sometime work, but we've got a couple of repeaters whose closest airport is the same one. And LZU or 1AB aren't necessarily readily recognizable as well. If anyone figures anything out, please let me know. I'd definitely like to have something else in the Repeater Listings for the new radios at http://www.dstarinfo.com/repeaters/repeaters.htm Ed WA4YIH _,_._,___
