On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 08:50:20AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> flavor, containing: > On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Tom Russo wrote: > > > That depends on the local APRS infrastructure and how it's loaded. That > > 300mW > > might be enough to hit a digipeater if your terrain is right and your > > infrastructure is built up enough. Once it gets digipeated, the power of > > the > > original tracker is less important. There is no infrastructure you can > > leverage with a Rino, and it's strictly line-of-sight between tracker and > > receiver. > > Even if a few tests when the frequency is not extremely busy look > like the 300mW can get into digipeaters, if you are in hilly terrain > or if pretty much _anyone_ else transmits when you do, you're not > going to get into the digipeater. For the most part, to have an > equal chance to get into the digi, most people need to run roughly > the same power levels. Mobiles that are running 50W and good > antennas will easily capture the digipeater over you, and you won't > get heard. > > I still stick by my 5-8W recommendation for portables. FWIW I run a > 1/4 wave whip on the roof of my Cherokee fed by a TM-261A mobile > radio set to medium power and have excellent results. I don't tend > to bump it up to 50W anymore. > > The rest of Tom's response was spot-on. Just had to get my slight > disagreement stated above.
We don't disagree that much. I am very distrustful of these ultra-low-power, deaf trackers. But there are many of them getting made, so *somebody* must be finding them useful. To be useful, the APRS infrastructure must be very good, the terrain must be wide open, and the loading of the infrastructure must be low. I hinted at that with my first paragraph. I would never use a 300mW tracker out here, where 5W is barely enough to assure adequate coverage in canyons. Milage can vary, though, and I was allowing for that. I recommend using beefy trackers for SAR, too. -- Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/ Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM "And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" --- The Tick _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list Xastir@xastir.org http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
