Jason, I agree that "some" APRS users do rely on RF only, and if your intended audience is 300 miles away, by all means, use the path needed to get there. Conscientious Hams would test their path with their target, and set it accordingly. Your settings are yours, but we all have to share a limited RF resource.
Most "Trackers" only care about getting on the internet maps. So if that is the case, why clog up distant RF networks with garbage if your audience is looking at http://aprs.fi ? As more Trackers, and off the shelf APRS ready radios hit the market, and the slow RF network gets more overloaded, large routine paths from "Trackers" could easily hamper important emergency APRS activities that use RF, sometimes exclusively. Who cares about hops to I-gates? Most of the folks on this forum rely on I-gates to get there info to the internet. With awesome tools like http://aprs.fi/?c=raw&call= APRS users can easily look at their RAW history, and hops that were needed to get to their audience, the internet. Any intact WIDEn-N in their RAW was extra hops. Cheers, Alan n6vud > Who cares how many hops to an Igate? Some of us operate on _RF_. > > -Jason > kg4wsv
