Below is the text of a message that I have forwarded from the UI-View reflector, I thought Bob Bruninga's response was worthy of a reprint here. Bob was responding to a question I had posted. Someone had questioned if UI-View was becoming obsolete, I responded that maybe APRS was obsolete.
Andy K3UK ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Robert Bruninga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Jul 8, 2006 11:57 PM Subject: [ui-view] APRS Obsolete? (DFing) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] >...is APRS obsolete? With the advent of things like ALE >and Winlink, I wonder what the purpose of APRS is >(aside from tracking where your ham friend is in his car) ? That's the problem. Too many people only see APRS as a tracking program and have not paid attention to some of the more interesting, though less used facets. One of the most significant of these was direction finding and signal (jammer) location by signal strength. The original APRS programs included Direction Finding as an equal in the trinity of Tracking, Weather and DF. In the mid 90's Numerous articles were found in many of the Ham magazines showing how to build and to interface DF units to APRS for automatic DFing. APRS had automatic intefaces for these systems and others: Roanoke Doppler Doppler Systems Inc N7LUE Doppler kit DFjunior But even more powerful was the ability to localize any signal to a neighborhood or a mile or so simply by signal strength alone. Since APRS could see where eveyrone was, and most stations back then included PHG (Antenna Gain and Height above average terrain) APRS could instantly plot overlaping signal strength contours that could easily localize any signal source in seconds. See: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/dfing.html The beauty of this omni-signal-strength plotting was that 100% of every station on the air could give GOOD input so the jammer could be localized in seconds. This was two orders of magnitude better response than the old Beam heading technique, because now 100% of everyone had useful data (not just the 5% who have beams).. Plus *not-hearing* the signal was equally good data because their signal controur plotted where the signal *was-not*. (again, 10 times more people don't hear it than do, so we get 10 times more data (and territority eliminated)). DFing was growing exponentially in the mid-90's with the excitement of APRS which brought it all together with GPS, DF units and maping/tracking and signal strength contours. But then UIview came out with its ease of use and very high popularity. Not only did it not include any of the DF stuff (without an add-on) but it also did not include the fundamental APRS station information about antenna height and gain (without an add-on or manual entry) so that all these new stations had no input into the signal strength contours (without an add on). Thus they could not even easily give data to other DF stations who could plot it because none of the tools wree built in. So as the popularity of UIview rapidly increased, the capability of APRS as a community DF system rapidly deminished to where most users these days are not aware of this fundamental function of APRS and cannot contribute signal strength data for instantly localizing the source of a signal (without an add-on or manually formatting it by hand.) This is a real disappointment since the combination of Maps with GPS, and APRS and Signal Sterngth information and Station Antenna contours was just such a natural to bring amateur radio signal finding to the 21st century. UIview has add-ons to add these capapbilties, but it is kind of like the problem with Beams and DF equipment, they're not there in most cases when you need them. The idea was that every APRS user was suppsoed to be able to display DF and signal strength data and to input signal data into the "community solution" and the only way this works is if everyone has it at their fingertips and practices with it when they hear a strrange signal on their repeater. Then we as a community can really have something to offer other communicatiosn services. Jammers and clowns on the Marine VHF and other services could all equally be plotted for example. So that is one of the hopes for the future, that we will get back on the Signal Finding growth curve that we were on back in the mid 90's and add this fantastic capability to our tool kits. Bob, Wb4APR -- Andy K3UK Fredonia, New York. Skype Me : callto://andyobrien73 Also available via Echolink [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Great things are happening at Yahoo! Groups. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/TISQkA/hOaOAA/yQLSAA/ELTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
