README.WWN SUGGESTED USE OF APRS IN THE WATERWAY NET APRS is the perfect tool for passing informal traffic to an from boats and for tracking boats underway. APRS was designed by a person with 20 years NAVY experience with tactical radar and data displays and ship-to-ship data networks on HF. APRS was designed to operate continuously in the background and provide connectivity between widely dispersed stations. It will provide position and status reporting for all units underway, in near real-time. I say near-real-time, because APRS should not be considered a mechanism for intense keyboard to keyboard conversations; but is ideal for exchanging one- line messages over an extended time frame without the problems of maintaining a CONNECTION. My experience in using APRS on the Naval Academy boats on summer cruise, is that with boats transmitting their positions and status once every 15 minutes, there is over a 90% chance that every boat will be seen at least once every 4 hours, 24 hours a day. PROPOGATION STATISTICS: A secondary benefit of the APRS protocol is that it operates like a poor-man's chirp-sounder. Since APRS keeps statistics on the number of packets heard from each station over the last 24 hours, this display can be used to verify HF connectivity between stations throughout the day. It's like a free radio check every 15 minutes everywhere! After watching APRS statistics for just a day, or so, the daily variations in propogation conditions to all stations is visible at a glance. Further improvements in connectivity is possible by changing frequency bands during the solar day. By saving statistics on each band in a different file, the APRS user can use this data to optimize his connectivity at any time of day or location. WATERWAY NET OPERATION: There is already a national APRS position reporting network operating on 7.085 and 10.151 LSB. (Tune 510 Hz higher if you are operating an AEA PK-232) All boaters and Recreational Vehicles are welcome! To help in tuning up on these frequencies, we have encouraged a few 24 hour stations to set their alias to TUNE. Then, if you set your UNPROTO path to TUNE and use the OPS-PING function, you will get a digipeated packet back from that station when you are tuned in. Also try TUNE1, TUNE2, etc, if there are other alternate permanent stations with better propogation. Once you are tuned in, execute the OPS-QUERY command which will request position reports from everyone on frequency (over the next 2 minutes). Be patient.. Even without a Query, all stations will transmit their positions once every 15 minutes... POSITION REPORTING: Their are several ways to report your position into the APRS network. First, run APRS and both your position and status will be reported automatically. Additionally, your station can send and receive messages to and from other stations on the net. If you turn off your PC computer, APRS places your position report in your TNC BeaconText so that your TNC will continue to report your last known position once every 15 minutes or so. This Beacon only contains your Position and words to indicate that your APRS program is not running. If you want your TNC to automatically report your position AND some meaningful status information, you can enter your LAT/LONG and additional comments manually into your TNC BText before Quitting APRS. GPS/LORAN AUTOMATIC REPORTING: With the optional APRS $9 GPS registration APRS can report your real-time position automatically. Simply connnect your navigation device NMEA-0183 output to your second PC COMM port. APRS will insert the NMEA position, course and speed automatically into your APRS position report. You can also do this without APRS and a laptop, by using the PACCOM TNC version 3.2 ROM in an HF compatible TNC. This TNC can be wired directly to a GPS device and set to send out your position on a set periodicity. OBJECT REPORTING: Since ANY APRS station can report the position of any other objects, your position can be automatically transmitted into the APRS network by ANY other station. Simply make a voice report to a friend or other waterway net member running APRS. He can put you on his map so everyone in the net will see you. Give your LAT/LONG, course and speed. You can also include about 28 characters (36 without Cse/Spd) of additional comments as desired. This is a good place to report your Estimated-Time-of-Arrival, etc. All APRS position reports are time stamped, so that there is no confusion as to when a report was valid. DEAD RECKONING: APRS automatically dead reckons all position reports. This causes all stations to see the most realistic positional display. All stations that are dead reckoned show up in light blue color and have an anchor line back to their last actual reported position. To defeat dead reckoning and display all stations at their last reported positions, simply use the CONTROLS-dR command to toggle off dead reckoning. When moving the cursor to select stations on the map display be sure to select the actual position, not the dead reckoned position. If even new posits are dead- reckoned, then your PC clock is off. FILE-SHELL-DOS to re-set your clock! TRACK HISTORIES: APRS automatically saves all track histories to disk. To reduce redundant data, APRS normally filters out all positions from the same station that are within 80 yards of each other. This accounts for the random- ness of the Selective Availability. This filter can be turned off, so that all positions (that are not exact duplicates) will be saved. Fixed stations will only be saved once per track history file. These track histories can be replayed at any time, either from memory or from file. WEATHER REPORTING: All stations on the net can be apprised of unusual weather conditions by any station placing a weather symbol on the map. Just like stations, weather symbols will be dead reckoned between reports. In this way APRS is ideal for reporting the movements of hurricanes and tropical storms. There are over a dozen different weather symbols for this type of weather reporting. Secondly, the $9 APRS WX registration permits automatic reporting of wind speed, direction, temperature and rainfall using the ULTIMETER-II home weather station. All stations with this interface show up on the maps as a large blue DOT with a line indicating the wind direction and speed. Their position report also includes the temperature and the rainfall. Similarly, any station can select to use the Weather station symbol for his station, and can manually enter his wind speed and direction for display on the net. See WX.TXT. SYMBOLS: In addition to a number of Weather symbols, APRS has two boat symbols (Sail & Power) plus a Buoy and Lighthouse symbol. The Buoy can be colored red or green if it is added as a symbol to a map label. See SYMBOLS.txt. WATERWAY NET OPERATIONS: Waterway Net participants that are HF packet capable can routinely report thier posits on the HF APRS nets. This will free up the voice net for passing of more voice traffic, and for posits from non packet stations. One APRS station can volunteer daily to uplink the voice position reports into the network from his display by placing them on his screen as OBJECTS. Once these reports are being uplinked into the APRS net, any other APRS station can assume reporting responsibility for that OBJECT (station) simply by uplinking a later report. APRS always overwrites old reports with new ones so that anyone with newer information can uplink it to everyone. This enables stations to pass off APRS reporting responsibilities and keeps the network from being dependent on specific full time stations. WATERWAY NET MESSAGE TRAFFIC: All APRS stations are encouraged to uplink thier operational status in their one-line BEACON. Secondly, APRS stations can send short message lines to any other stations on the net. These short messages can be used throughout the day for making schedules for voice contacts on 7268 without the stations having to listen to the HF freq all day. There is also a several line BULLETIN capability for putting out information to all monitoring stations. After HF voice operations, stations that are packet equipped can just turn the volume down and park the HF rig on the APRS frequency instead of turning it off. This will keep them fully informed and reported without any additional effort. APRS NET FREQUENCIES: Until we saturate, all boaters are welcome on the 10.151 LSB APRS National tracking net. YES, THIS IS IN THE BAND! See the esplaination in HF.TXT OTHER BANDS: An APRS reporting frequency should also be established on each of the higher bands as well. I have not done this, because both of my HF rigs are dedicated full time to 7085 and 10151. I would encourage distant travelers to stake out additional APRS frequencies on 18 and 24 meters. For just playing around, try 20 meters at 14.100 LSB. YES this is listed as the INTERNATIONAL CW BEACON frequency, but again, read HF.TXT to see that operating LSB on that DIAL freq is actually 1700 to 2100 HZ away from the actual CW frequency! NAVAL ACADEMY APRS NET: During summers only, the Academy operates an APRS net on 3 Navy HF frequencies for tracking its 20+ boats on summer cruises. Serious HF APRS shoreside stations with NAVY credentials might be useful for assisting the Academy in passing traffic. If you are interested, please contact WB4APR. APRS is also used by the Afloat MARS net for reporting the positions of all stateside MARS stations on frequency for passing phone patch traffic. The US Navy ships, of course, do not report their positions for security reasons, but use APRS to show who is listening stateside. For more info on the Navy MARS APRS afloat net, contact N1BFQ in New Hampshire.