I've tried to get APRS involved in some events, but I find the hard part is getting folks to volunteer :).
Used xastir at the finish line of a 40 mile hike, had a few other APRS stations along the way. I hiked the last 20 miles myself, carrying a D7 w/ GPS. http://cryptojoe.blogspot.com/2009/05/twenty-mile-hike.html 73 de Joseph Durnal NE3R On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Jason Godfrey<[email protected]> wrote: > Hello. > > I was just browsing the list archives, and saw this question from Mike > Benonis from about two weeks ago: > >> By the way, as a more general question to those who have used APRS for >> bike tours/races, does anyone have any tips for a smooth event? > > I'm not sure if it is too late for him, but since we just had the > Minnesota MS150 last weekend I thought I would comment. > > In past years we've had APRS beacons on all of our sag wagons and few > other key vehicles and a full APRS station at net control. This year > we decided to expand and add a full APRS station at each rest stop as > well as on the Incident Response Team vehicles (the IRTs may of had a > full station past years, I forget.) Another key decision was was to > add a dedicated APRS op to net control. > > The expanded use APRS helped quite a bit, especially in the view of > our longtime net control supervisor. He felt it reduced his workload > noticeably. Using APRS messaging for lower priority messages kept > traffic off of our UHF voice backbone. The use of objects to track > rider pickups, incidents, and other issues helped with situational > awareness, and in the case of IRT's - finding where we sent them. > > A couple of points of things that can help for a smooth event: > > 1. Training and testing before the event. Make sure the equipment > works and the operators who are going to be using it know how to. > > 2. Check digipeater coverage. We had to add in some for the event. > (And unfortunately one wasn't working, which impacted coverage on > Sunday.) > > 3. For net control at least - Listen to both RF and IGATE if you can. > Sometimes messages/objects come in one interface and not the other. > > 4. Having a dedicated APRS op at net control is very helpful. The > person(s) running the voice net is too busy to use APRS effectively by > himself. > > 5. Use APRS for more then just tracking vehicles. Objects and > messaging are useful. > > I think that covers the highlights. > > - Jason, N0RPM > > -- > I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution. > -- Wernher von Braun > _______________________________________________ > Xastir mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir > _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
