Finished the APRS mobile project, I just popped it into the boot and been out for a quick drive. Nothing on aprs.fi…! I’ll put this down to the poor APRS coverage on the Wirral at present, though I note both of the reasonably ‘local’ iGates are both showing as being ‘on air’.
I’ve used the data output from the Icom 2820 to provide NMEA sentences to avoid the need for a second GPS RX in the car. This feeds the APRS modem via a MAX202 RS232 level driver to fool the 2820 into sending data (It needs to see a true -8V RS232 level or it outputs nothing) to it. The radio is my oldish FT-51 with the broken battery pack. Try finding a replacement part these days so I hard wired some power cables and use it for projects such as this. Whole setup is very neatly installed in a small enclosure and hidden away in the boot.
Will ensure I have it enabled for the trip to the office tomorrow and see how I get on.
I’ve been having a look at APRS over the last few days since I started sending the data from my weather station to CWOP. XASTIR has been installed on one of the Linux machines in the shack and sucessfully configured. I don’t have a TNC so I’ve been using Soundmodem as a software TNC connected to the audio output of my 2m Yaesu.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get an APRS TX unit in the car to see if the software is perfoming. Currently I see a large amount of infomation from the net but not much on 144.800 to really test the setup.
Watch this space but hopefully a useful APRS RX only iGate will be on the Wirral soon.
Currently there seems to be an issue with the sensors on the masthead hence there is no wind speed or direction being report / recorded. The barometer is reporting data but is long due a calaibration. Hopefully an hour can be found this week to investigate.
On a related note, my WX data is now being posted on APRS and to CWOP in addition to the long standing post the the Weather Underground.
