The APRS family of software has many uses and is many different things to different people. APRS can be used for tracking moving vehicles, tracking yourself as you drive around, fox hunts, keeping track of weather conditions, and observing radio wave propagation. Right now, you will find APRS activity on HF and VHF radio and even on Internet. I highly recommend that you pay a visit to The APRS Virtual Meeting which is a site that contains a number of different how-to's, presentations and APRS documentation and, if you have a lot of time to spare and are looking at how other hams are doing things, pay a visit to The APRS Webring which contains the URL's for several sites which are dedicated to APRS.
WinAPRS is a shareware; details on its registration are provided in the downloadable comprehensive documentation which may be obtained by clicking here: WinAPRS Documentation.
Software distribution sites
Current releases of the WinAPRS software and patches may be found at : TAPR WinAPRS software download site. Keith and Mark Sproul also run a site which contains the latest Mac/WinAPRS programs and lots of maps, mostly of the USA: Keith and Mark Sproul's site.
Users of the DOS version of APRS may obtain current releases and patches of this particular software, in addition to several DOS APRS maps of Canada, which are compatible with WinAPRS, at the Canadian APRS Support System:
Canadian APRS Support Site
WinAPRS maps
Whilst it is true that the maps designed to run with the DOS version of APRS will run equally well on WinAPRS, these maps have by far much less resolution that those which were designed for WinAPRS. DOS-APRS maps have a maximum of 3000 points where one of my WinAPRS maps has 383,870 points (I don't know if that is the limit). Up to now, there have been very few WinAPRS maps of Canada which were produced and none which provide detailed street-level information such as the map of Greater Montréal, which is shown below.
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. This the map which is currently available to the users of WinAPRS in Montréal. Of course, one can zoom in on a particular area of interest, by doing a right click on the mouse on the selected area.
My QTH is located on the EAST (right handside) end of the map; I live in a small community called McMasterville, QC, Canada. The other callsigns which appear on the map are stations which were active on the local APRS frequency (144.39 Mhz) at the time I saved this map.
There you are, you could even zoom in a little more and end up in the spa in my backyard. The availability of such maps makes WinAPRS such a great software. Unfortunately, digital mapping information is not readily available in Canada. We have converted all the data that was available to us, mostly for cities in the Province of Québec.
So far, we have generated street-level maps for Montréal, Québec City, Chicoutimi, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, the Hull-Ottawa areas and for Regina. All maps are stored on this server and may be obtained through FTP at the following address:VE2AW's Canadian WinAPRS Maps Repository
The digital mapping data that we currently use to produce the street-level WinAPRS maps comes from data either in .dxf, .MIFor .e00 (ArcInfo) files which are interpreted and converted to the WinAPRS Map File Format. Details on the Map File Format are provided in the WinAPRS Documentation files.
Large scale maps
A large-scale map for the Province of Québec which is entitled "La Belle Province" is also available. It is available for download in my map repository in the "PROVINCES" directory; under filename QC1.ZIP. Please be patient as its file size is a little over 1.9Mb.
New map for Southern Alberta!
Rob, VE3ADJ (the restless map maker!) has just released a map for Southern Alberta (file name Sab1.zip). It is indeed another very fine map which also covers Saskatchewan and the Eastern part of BC; I'm sure you will love it! This new map is available for download in my map repository in the "DCW" directory, where you will also find the other maps which have been produced by Rob. On behalf of all Rob, a hearthy thanks for this fine work; keep those maps coming!!!
Thank You!
I thank you for taking the time to visit my site and read about one of my pet projects. I would also like to thank my friend and programmer, Mr Yvon Leduc of Montreal (not a ham-yet) who helped me realize my dream and who wrote the three programs for me.
Finally, a special thanks to Al Waller, K3TKJ, the System Administrator and host of this site, for making this facility available to us, the ham community.
