Position Reporting with APRS
By Richard Parry, W9IF
A few years ago, someone handed me a small Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and said that this little device would tell me where I was located anyone Earth. I could not believe my eyes or ears, and was not prepared to be sucked into this canard. How could this device, barely the size of a cellular phone, tell me where I was located within a hundred feet? It just couldn't be; this had to be a hoax. Upon further discussion and a demonstration, I was hooked. I knew I had to have one, but wasn't sure why. It took a while to come up with an excuse, but I finally did, thanks to the pioneering work of Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, and his Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS).
Before my final purchase, I spent two years playing armchair APRS quarterback. I stared at maps on my computer screen, watching the symbols that represented the locations of my fellow hams. Some of these symbols even moved while I watched! They represented hams who had GPS receivers in their automobiles, boats or whatever. The GPS receivers sent position information to packet radio TNCs (terminal node controllers), which then process the data for transmission to the APRS network.
Read the rest of the story here
A few years ago, someone handed me a small Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and said that this little device would tell me where I was located anyone Earth. I could not believe my eyes or ears, and was not prepared to be sucked into this canard. How could this device, barely the size of a cellular phone, tell me where I was located within a hundred feet? It just couldn't be; this had to be a hoax. Upon further discussion and a demonstration, I was hooked. I knew I had to have one, but wasn't sure why. It took a while to come up with an excuse, but I finally did, thanks to the pioneering work of Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, and his Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS).
Before my final purchase, I spent two years playing armchair APRS quarterback. I stared at maps on my computer screen, watching the symbols that represented the locations of my fellow hams. Some of these symbols even moved while I watched! They represented hams who had GPS receivers in their automobiles, boats or whatever. The GPS receivers sent position information to packet radio TNCs (terminal node controllers), which then process the data for transmission to the APRS network.
Read the rest of the story here
posted by W. Thomas Miles @ Sunday, April 16, 2006
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