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Nashville APRS NewsUpdate by Bruce Martin (KQ4TV) The Waynsboro and Crossville digis have been removed from service due to new policies enacted by the new owners (DukeNet) that make it onerous to keep amateur equipment at any DukeNet owned tower site. The Short Mountain Digi will be off the air until the weather gets cooler (October?) and we can put a new feedline and antenna on the tower. The old tri-band antenna that was previously used by the digi and a UHF repeater was found to be full of water which severely degraded it's performance. A DB408 was put up in it's place for the UHF repeater. We had planned to use other existing coax on the tower to feed a tuned J-pole for the digi but found that both pieces of coax had been maliciously cut about 20 feet up the tower. Update by Bruce Martin (KQ4TV) We have been quite busy with several digi updates and deployment of new digis so this sight has not been updated in awhile. The WB0NOO and NT4L digis have all been updated to the New N-n Paradigm and had their callsigns changed. See the sidebar to the left for locations and new callsigns. Sean has deployed a new digi to the Waynesboro area and I have a digi testing at my house that will be deployed to the Crossville area soon. Because of the New N-n Paradigm the reccomendations for Mobile and Digi Configurations are out of date and I hope to get them updated soon. The basic change is that RELAY, WIDE, and TRACE are no longer used. In place of RELAY use WIDE1-1. In place of WIDE use WIDE2-2 or TN2-2 and use it only once in a UNPROTO PATH statement. Keep checking for the updated configuration recommendations. update by Sean Jewett (KG4NRC) The Short Mountain digi is back on the air. It is on the air under the callsign NT4L-1. The digi now has OHX as one of it's ALIAS/UIDIGI paths in preperation to deploy WX packets from the NWS OHX office via APRS. update by Sean Jewett (KG4NRC) At this time the WB0NOO-1 (Short Mountain) digi is off the air. It has been off the air for over 2 weeks. The timing is fairly close to when a major storm blew thru the area. There are plans in the works to replace the hardware and correct whatever problems may have occured. We'll update this site when the digi is back on the air. In other news, we'll be updating the server that runs this site and also does duty as first.nashvilleaprs.net. We'll add additional harddrive space and hopefully a new look to the site. One of the plans is to allow a certain number of trustees to be able to update content on the site. In addition, we'll add the ability to host listserves in order to communicate with various people and groups that have an interest in APRS or packet. We'll let you all know when that happens too. There has been some discussion about excessive paths on the TAPR APRS-SIG mailing list. The general consensus is that anything wider than WIDE3-3 is considered excessive, and that WIDE3-3 is excessive in areas where digipeater and igate coverage is good. In addition, the Nashville area (from Western Mid TN to E Mid-TN and points in between) is WIDEn-n compliant. Thus, we should not see WIDE,WIDE,WIDE in paths. The goal of APRS is to provide local and up to regional tactical communications. Anything wider than 2-3 hops and beaconing more than once every 3 minutes is considered excessive and a detriment to the APRS network. APRS works because everyone shares. By running WIDE5-5 you take up an excessive amount of bandwidth that can be better utilized by others. As a result of this discussion, some areas are taking measures to trim paths of excessive lengths. Digi's in the Nashville area are not currently taking these measures but will do so if network stability is needed. The key is for everyone to cooperate by running smart paths and beacon at rates that make sense. A path of RELAY,WIDE2-2 is more than ample to cover the Mid-TN area with your position. Anything else causes QRM on the network. Also in the works is setting up a dedicated internet to RF gateway for WX info. There appears to be someone doing it already, though we don't know who. We'd like to coordinate this as a whole. Digi's as they're being updated are being set with an OHX unproto path if they fall within the NWS OHX office coverage area. The eventual goal is for a station to gate that information with an OHX unproto path and hit every digi within the OHX coverage area. The payoff is for those people running D700's, D7's or other APRS stations to get OHX weather bulliten when they're in the OHX coverage area. Likewise, this will help keep OHX statements in the OHX area and not showing up in Birmingham (BMX). Special thanks to Dan Skaggs (N7DLS) for helping to put the N4CRT-1 digi on the air. It's located near the Hickman, Perry, and Lewis county lines. It appears to be filling in a major coverage hole. The Huntsville Hamfest is August 16 and 17. I'll be there on the 16th (Saturday). See you there! update by Sean Jewett (KG4NRC) Updated the suggested mobile configs page after announcments at Hamvention. The biggest announcement is that TRACE is deprecated in use and is no longer a suggested UNPROTO path. update by Sean Jewett (KG4NRC) PHG Calculator now available. While it's easy to look at Bob's graph from PROTOCOLS.TXT (as linked on the PHG Calc), I went ahead and threw together a PHG calc for those times when it's easier to click your way to the PHG value. You can use the PHG Calc here or it's linked to your left under the "Links of Interest" heading. update by Sean Jewett (KG4NRC) The Tullahoma Hamfest looked to be a success, although I only came out with half of what I wanted to accomplish while I was there (that being an upgrade to General). However, Bruce walked out with a steal on 2 MFJ 1270C's. After the hamfest, Bruce (KQ4TV), Terry (KE4PJW), my neighbor Jerry (WB9BSH), Jeff Henry (who took and passed the Tech test while there) and I (KG4NRC) headed over to Franklin to setup a new digi and see if we could fill in some major holes in APRS coverage. The call is NT4L-3 and is setup with RELAY only in its ALIAS. It should hopefully fill in some holes we've seen in the Franklin and (hopefully) the Cool Springs area. This added with W4GGM-1 in Columbia should hopefully fill in 2 major holes in the I-65 corridor and get mobile stations into W1ARN-1, WB0NOO-2, WB0NOO-1, and KF4TNP-1. I've updated the menu to the left to reflect the two new RELAY only digi's. Tullahoma Hamfest is this Saturday, March 29. Please see the MTARS Hamfest website for additional information. Added the "Query Station" section to the left. Put in a callsign with its SSID (ie, KG4NRC-1) and press enter or use the query button. Please Note: this feature will will open a new browser window. Updated the Igate config page after Tim Cunningham, N8DEU, pointed out the problems associated with MicE conversion on Igates. There are more details at the bottom of that page. First.nashvilleaprs.net (aka www.nashvilleaprs.net) is now moved to its new home. This location features redundant large internet connections. In addition, it features an Internet 2 connection, which interconnects many large universities. As a result, all traffic from first.nashvilleaprs.net to first.aprs.net goes over the Internet 2 backbone rather than the "commodity" or commercial Internet 1 backbone (the internet everyone else uses). Site update! Added link to the W1ARN digi that resides at Music Mountain. Added suggested settings contained in email from Bruce Martin (KQ4TV). First.nashvilleaprs.net now online. It's in a temporary home, we'll announce when the server will move in the future. Jimmy Floyd, NQ4U, has WA4ZDS-1 on as a digi for the Tullahoma / Coffee County area. Second.nashvilleaprs.net is now online. At this time there are no clients providing data to the system. kg4ozl.nashvilleaprs.net is serving up the APRS data feed for the Nashville area at this time. |