Arkansas APRS Network
Arkansas APRS Network News
(if you have anything to
add pertaining to Arkansas APRS, email [email protected])
4/25/2001: Scott Derden, K5SCD, reports, “The LTROCK CAREN club digi is now back
on the air. The equipment has been replaced with a new Kantronics KPC3+
TNC, a Kenwood TM-261 transceiver, and a Diamond X-500 dual band antenna at 90
feet on the club tower. Reports so far have been good, but I am still looking
for reports from you guys outside of Little Rock. Thanks to Scott and the
CAREN Club for their support of this important digi.
Last
night James, KK5WM and I noticed that the N5HU IGATE server is down. After
attempts to remotely reset both the computer and the TNC, I went to the station
today and quickly found the problem. The Harding University Amateur Radio Club
sponsor/trustee, Bill Ryan, K3RDX, is moving to Oklahoma for a better teaching
opportunity. Since he owned the HF Rig and Astron Power Supply, he had to go
pull them yesterday to pack up. So N5HU is temporarily Off the air until
another Power supply is secured. I hope to have it running sometime tomorrow.
Sorry for the inconvenience! Consider this an opportunity to try APRS off the
International Space Station.
See http://www.rac.ca/arisspak.htm
for more imformation about APRS and ISS!
4/21/2001: Well it was
great to see those of you who came to the Little Rock Hamfest, the APRS Forum
was a great success and I was glad to see about 40 new APRSers on hand to hear
Scott, W5JSR and myself, KD5GOB give a Introduction to APRS and describe all
the great uses and possibilities that APRS adds to the Ham Radio hobby! I want
to thank Scott and Bill McEntire for all their help and hard work in making
this happen.
3/29/2001: The LTROCK digi is currently off the air
for upgrades. Scott Derden, K5SCD, reports... Also, for you dual mode folks,
the LIT59 and LIT50 packet nodes are down for upgrades, and are part of this
same project on my workbench! Estimated date for reactivation is Tuesday, April
3. Details on improvements and changes will be posted after completion of the
project. We'll keep you posted!
Bill McEntire, KC5ECB, wanted to share this story! Very cool!
I was camping in Searcy County this weekend with friends and had my APRS ht
with me. Before I left my truck to hit the trails I set my mobile APRS radio to
digi my ht out to LTROCK. Around 8pm we started to see lightning to the north
of us. Unable to receive NOAA weather I tried to hit 146.940 to get some
weather info but no one could hear my little 5 watt ht from over 80 miles.I
could hit the closer repeaters but no one was on. I then switched to APRS and
even though I was several miles away from my truck I could hit LTROCK with
ease. I then sent out a message requesting weather info and KK5WM came back to
me. With amazement of my friends we sat in camp and read the weather info he
sent us. We had a total of 4 cell phones 1 Sprint phone and 1 NOAA weather
radio and all failed. It was great being able to get the information we needed
that helped us decide to stay at the campsite we were at and not have to pack
up everything for higher ground. They just couldnt believe it when I said we
were getting this info from a ham in the Searcy area. Once again APRS got
through when all else failed. Knowing that I could get help and everyone would
know where we were was a great feeling.
3/13/2001: N5HU which is the Internet Gateway server/digi for Central Arkansas has now been configured to transmit only Arkansas weather warnings/watches AUTOMATICALLY! So monitor APRS during severe weather to see county warnings as they pop up. Also be sure to monitor repeaters for SKYWARN too! Click HEREto learn how to install the Arkansas County outline files so when a weather warning is issued the county affected will change color! Neat feature! Also Steve, N5QC has noticed that the LTROCK digi isn't digipeating packets during the CAREN club nets... Please help monitor APRS during these nets by trying to send your position (F2 key) and let us know what you observe!
2/19/2001: LTROCK is now back at its home on Shinall Mountain. James, KK5WM and Bill, KC5ECB checked it out and Bill took it back up the Mountain. Bill reports, "We went up Sunday to hook it back up and when it went into the TX mode it shut off. Time after time it did this. After taking the cover off the radio to see if we could see what was wrong we started to screw the coax connector back on and noticed the connector was loose from the coax. After finding another piece of coax we tried it again and IT WORKED !! After all the time LTROCK has been down it ended up being a bad coax connector. Other good news is as soon as we get a day with nice weather I will hook it up to another antenna on the CAREN tower. This antenna is better and about 20 feet higher.
2/8/2001: LTROCK is currently at the home of KK5WM in Beebe, AR
while he is diagnosing the problem we have been having with it on the mountain.
James Wiles, KK5WM reports it is working perfectly and will be moving it back
to Shinall Mountain soon.
2/4/2001: N5HU was having some TNC problems with the KAMPlus currently installed there. So I took my KPC-3+ up there and plugged it in and it is working perfectly. N5HU is the APRS Internet Gateway server that echos all the packets it hears to the internet and gates certain packets of interest to Arkansas users from the internet backbone including weather warnings. I am working on filtering out all non-Arkansas weather information.
This page is maintained by
Jamie Hutches, KD5GOB
Arkansas RACES Asst. DEC
Packet -APRS
[email protected]