My APRS track for today (May 27, 2015)

I'm getting ready for my summer vacation trip, and I'll be taking an Amateur Radio (Ham radio) transceiver along to keep me company on the trip.

One of the things I can do with this radio is transmit my position periodically.  I wanted to see what the track looked like from the http://aprs.fi website. The system we use is called APRS, which is an abbreviation for Automatic Packet Reporting System (or, Automatic position reporting system; the original author of the concept doesn't like that)  Hams use it to inform other hams where they are. When my radio receives a signal from another ham who is on APRS, it displays information such as how far away from me he is, in what direction, and any messages he may have embedded in his transmission.  The embedded messages might be what frequency he is listening on.

Generous folks have put up devices known as iGates.  These receive the APRS signals and retransmit  them on the Internet.  Then, several websites take that information, compile it in databases, and display it on tracking maps.  An example of the track for my vehicle today is shown here clipped from the website http://www.aprs.fi

My ham radio callsign is NØSYS, (The second character is a zero) and for my truck I add -9 as my primary mobile station. The track is the light blue line.  You see my truck at the last position near Zirconia on the bottom of the map.

You can see on this plot that I went up I-26 to Arden to go to a restaurant, then to Harbor Freight, and then back home.  Then I went on another trip to NW Hendersonville, and returned via Howard Gap Road.

The track might lead you to believe that I also went through Hendersonville or somehow jumped from Zirconia to Naples.  That's a problem with APRS.  If nobody receives your signal and transfers it to the Internet, through an iGate, then the software just fills in the blanks as best it can.  Actually, on all of my trips, I used Route I26 almost exclusively, except for the Howard Gap segment.

For those interested in the detailed information about my radio and setup:   I'm using a Yaesu FTM-400DM with an external Globalsat BR-355 GPS (the GPS built into the radio works, but is slow to lock up, probably because it doesn't have a good view of the sky) 

My plan is to post either screen captures of the track, such as this one, or else links to the actual track for aprs.fi.  The problem with the latter plan is that the tracks don't last forever on the aprs.fi website.

OEC AUXCOMM course

This past weekend (1/2 June 2013), I took the Office of Emergency Communications (OEC - part of Homeland Security) AUXCOMM course  at the Raleigh Emergency Operations Center. It was an excellent course.  It was well taught and a lot of good information was passed out. I would recommend the course to any amateur radio operator with an interest in assisting during emergency situations.

It was pointed out during this course that the Amateur in amateur radio means that a person does it for the love of it and not to be compensated in any way. "Doing it" is its' own compensation.  But it is also important to realize that amateur shouldn't mean un-professional.

The instructors stressed that we should leave our amateur radio organizations/positions/awards/badges/hats/t-shirts/etc. at the door when we report for an AUXCOMM assignment.  We become Auxiliary Communications personnel who have some special skills and knowledge which is appreciated by the emergency responders, but is not of any interest to them beyond how we perform the jobs they assign to us. In other words, do our assigned tasks, and don't try to impress the people for whom we are working with our knowledge about radios, etc.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  If you are very knowledgeable, it should be obvious by how you perform your assigned duties.

I've always found some of discussions among hams to be very tiring.  Flaunting equipment capabilities/hour of net participation/awards won/digital modes used/size of antenna/power supply model number/___________ (fill in the blank) seems to me to be similar to bumping chests or elk or moose or ram horn locking.  The same thing occurs among computer users - computer model number/size of hard drive/size of RAM/CPU speed/monitor size/______ (fill in the blanks). And the most insufferable of all is the amateur radio computer user.  It's ok to tell me if I ask, but not gratuitously.

Sorry.  I got off track there. But those are the kinds of things we do to try to impress the unenlightened with our prowess.  And those are the kinds of things that keep us out of EOCs and other emergency situations.

It occurred to me that I enjoyed this course more than the COML course I took last November, probably because it was pointed at amateur radio operators, and the jargon used was more understandable than that spoken by emergency people. Not being immersed in the emergency responder environment caused me during the COML course to have to think about "what did he just say?" That detracted from the course for me because I missed important points. But that's why we take these courses - so that when we are in the environment, we won't be in a total fog. This past weekend's course was a good "bridge" between the two environments.

A photo of the class is at http://goo.gl/Zhd7D or http://auxcomm.us/main/2013/06/oec-auxcomm-training-class-held-at-n-c-state-eoc-2/

The final note in the course was: "Train as you operate, operate as you train"