Many thanx, Chip.........
When you note came in, I was one of the Tracker sites "shopping".
For Me, mobility is going to be more important first. I am organizing
a SAR group in our sparsely settled corner of NW Wisconsin. We can get
a lot of untrained volunteer searchers and I want a system where we can
track were they are and where they have been.
Therefore, I have a laptop running Xastir with the county shapefiles and
USGS topos for maps. As soon as I can work out a couple of dfawk
issues, I can have available photos as well. I am looking at either
going 1) the RTrak / MicroTrak or the 2) Radio/Tracker/GPS receiver
route ( in easy to wear, no carrier contact, bundle that we an put on
the volunteer searcher hip). (With all the chatter lately about the T2
working with a Garmin nuvi 350, that seems to be the way to go if we end
up going with a bundled setup. I am currently running Garmin nuvi 650s
in ambulances with the driveway locations of all the structures in the
county loaded.)
Each Search team can be expected to have a Law Enforcement or Fire
Department person with a radio for communications with base. We seem
to have access to a number of retired FD Sheriff's Motorola handheld
radios.
Then I need a receiver (am not sure about the need for a transceiver),
TNC, and antenna at the laptop for Incident Command.
We are in heavily forested area with lakes and rivers and low rolling
rises and depressions ( not even really hills). A Couple of the river
channels are fairly deep and narrow. We would expect that most, if not
all, of the searches would be within a 5 mile radius of a given
location. The one exception is lost canoeists, floaters going down the
rivers.
Budget is the big question mark......... there is the personal budget (
the domestic associate is not wild about investing in a huge load of
radio gear at one time-- it will have to be a slow build up) and then
there is the SAR group budget (that doesn't exist -- we will have to
"sell" the project to local groups with funds).
Personally, I am interested in emergency communications, weather
recording/reporting and vehicle tracking.
Does that help paint a picture of my "needs"?
Many thanx for any comments and suggestions and a big THANK YOU to all
the great folks that have sent notes of encouragement. I found my call
sign on the FCC website, but not on QRZ or ARRL yet. Should I be
worried and check into it?
Talk to you all later................ jt
Chip Griffin wrote:
On Feb 21, 2008, at 08:21, Jim Tolbert wrote:
Now I can legally move forward with a system of Xastir and trackers
for the SAR we are organizing.
Congratulations on the new license. You can know embark on a fun
journey with us in this wonderful hobby.
Regarding the rig and the setup. My first advice to you would be to
answer two questions. How much can you afford to spend? What do you
want to do with this radio/setup?
The first is important because if you have a tight budget it will
drive you in different directions than if you have a bit larger
budget. The second is important because it will help you know whether
you need a mobile or a ht, or perhaps something else.
If you answer those questions for us/me then we/I can give you some
more specific advice. There are also tons of resources on the net
which can help you review radios and other equipment. Google is a
wonderful tool.
73,
--de Chip (N1MIE) FN41bn
--
Jim Tolbert
RiverRidge Consulting, LLC
PO Box 536
Webster, WI 54893
715-866-4398 home office
715-349-8993 fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
Xastir mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
