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I'll be doing a mobile test this morning and this late afternoon PST on 30M VARA APRS. It begins in about 20 minutes! I will be on a 35 minute drive going west from my location this morning.


I'll be using a 30M ham stick for the task, just like I do on 40M. Roof mounted antenna, with 50W of power.

I did a pre-test, and 40M propagation looks great, but 30M seems to be struggling at the moment. I can get out on 40M from my based and mobile, but not 30M either way. So I'm hoping that once I get mobile 30M will pick up.

Let the games begin!

NA7Q

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[As I write this at 2:30 PM local Eastern Time (1930 UTC) i am seeing many more stations on 30 meters than on 40 meters APRS-over-VARA from my location in central Michigan. I am finding that the 40-meter APRS-over-VARA channel is completely unusable from this region in the evening hours due to extremely strong RTTY activity between stations in the US southeast and between the southeast and Europe.? Signals are routinely running 10-20 over S9. Once these stations go to bed at 2200-2300 Eastern, I start hearing your Pacific North West stations. ]

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It seems that you got out quite well.?? The raw data from findu.com?? <map.findu.com/NA7Q-4>? is below.? The callsigns after "qAR show the station that igated you into the Internet.?? Who or what is "KNAPPA"?? Doesn'te look like a real callsign.???????

You hit a variety of igates all around the country on this outing -- demonstrating the diversity receiving? effect of multiple igates scattered around the country, including mine several times.

This doesn't tell the whole story.?? More than one igate may have heard you on a given transmission, but "FIRST MAN IN WINS" -- the dupe-removal algorithm of the APRS Internet System removes all but the first copy of a given report.? The others are just "dropped on the floor" with no evidence they were heard. ? It depends on how fast the hardware/software at a given igate is in processing received transmissions, which APRS-IS server an igate is logged into, and the latency of the Internet from a given location; i.e. how many routers are traversed between the home station igate and the APRS-IS server they logged into.?

A lot of users don't pay attention to, or attempt to control, what APRS-IS server they log into? - I'm constantly seeing reports between mobiles & home station igates in North America being being passed through APRS servers in Europe or South America for no reason.? The igate operator just blindly accepted the luck of the draw for "Login to APRS-IS". ???

If an igate explicitly specifies an APRS-IS server login physically near to you, such as "noam.aprs2.net" (which will randomly pick a server from a pool of servers only in North America), ? instead of to Finland, Singapore or Rio de Janeiro, you can cut hundreds of milliseconds or more off the Internet latency.? For me in Michigan, I can narrow it down even more by entering "midwest.aprs2.net" in my igate logins -- it's a virtual server that picks from a pool of servers only located in the middle third of the US. ?? ?

[There are nearly a hundred APRS-IS servers around the world -- choose one physically near to your to log in your igate...]

One other question:?? When you say the antenna was mounted on the roof, was this an actual hard mount, or just a mag mount?? Even the large triple magnet mounts just don't have enough surface area in contact with the car's body sheet metal to be an efficient ground/counterpoise to the whip at the lower HF frequencies (below 15-20 meters).? This has NOTHING to do with SWR. ? A hardmount with a metallic connection directly to the body sheet metal could easily triple or quadruple your ERP on 30 or lower.

NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,KNAPPA:=4610.3 N/12334.1 WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,KNAPPA:=46 . N/123 . WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA:=46 . N/123 . WR
NA7Q-4>T6ZZZZ,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA:`3>,l R/`[1
NA7Q-4>T6ZZZZ,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA:`3>,l R/`[1
NA7Q-4>APDR17,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA:=46 . N/123 . WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA:=46 . N/123 . WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA::SMS :T{1
NA7Q-4>APDR17,KNAPPA,qAR,KNAPPA::SMS :ack5618
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA5LUY-11:!4610.24N/12334.24WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA8LMF-5:!4610.24N/12334.24WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA8LMF-5:!4610.24N/12334.24WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA8LMF-5:=/7//]/8oqR sT
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4610.23N/12334.52WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4610.09N/12334.91WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA8LMF-5:!4610.15N/12334.57WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA8LMF-5:!4610.24N/12334.24WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4610.23N/12334.23WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA8LMF-5:!4610.22N/12334.25WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,N0KQX-7:!4610.09N/12334.93WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,W6RAY-7:!4609.91N/12337.65WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,W6RAY-7:!4610.15N/12340.29WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,N0KQX-7:!4610.17N/12342.60WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4610.15N/12344.45WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,W6RAY-7::WXBOT :Today{1
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,N0KQX-7:!4610.39N/12345.40WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4611.31N/12345.27WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4611.33N/12348.99WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4611.43N/12350.79WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4611.07N/12351.57WR
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8::SMS :@Mike test{1
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,N0KQX-7::SMS :@Mike test{1
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8::WXBOT :Today{3
NA7Q-4>APDR17,qAR,WA7GMX-8:!4609.46N/12355.82WR

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?But still doesn't seem to be an actual callsign.?? Is this a receive-only system only facing the Internet -- not digipeating on RF?

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Hi Devan, I was using some modified smartbeaconing settings in VARAdroid. Happy to share those if interested.

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What is "VARAdroid"??? Does it actually generate VARA tones natively?

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Messaging is one the key things in APRS for many of us. So tracking and messaging are what we judge by. They are not necessarily equal due to the VARA speed differences between messages and basic position reports.

One major problem with 30m and the current network is that igates are?NOT timed. So every 2 way igate keys up at the exact same time causing a lovely clash of gibberish. On 40m, we are timed so that this doesn't happen. This significantly improves IS to RF gating.

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How do you assign the timing?? ? I can see that the usual VHF scenario of a limited number of igates in a given region, and FM capture most likely ensure one wins out over the others.? This would not be at all like what happens on HF.??

How large an area, and how many igates are involved in your 40M network???? Would there be any feasible way to extend this to continental scale?

I have to admit that my experience with APRS messaging on HF has been limited exclusively to radio<-->radio;? not radio<-->Internet.? The? multiple-stations-keying-up-at-once?? problems go away when addressing a specific call sign for RF-to-RF messaging which I have done over continental ranges on cross-country road trips many times. ??

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Oh, and the antenna is mounted to the roof via NMO but mag mounted for support. As it'll tear the thing metal like paper. So it has a full and proper ground, with greatly helps the performance over a mag mount with a coax run into the car. Also reduces the RFI into the vehicle by a lot.

Now I'm not sure why you are focused on my home VHF IGate "KNAPPA". Other than clearly you guys don't look at timestamps at all when looking at raw packets.?
Just to show you. 18:47 was an evening test of the band that did not go well. I had a difficult time getting out and hearing much. Very weak overall.?
2025-01-05 11:15:42 PST:?>APDR17,,qAR,::SMS??????:T{1
2025-01-05 11:15:50 PST:?>APDR17,,qAR,::SMS??????:ack5618
2025-01-05 18:47:44 PST:?>APDR17,qAR,:!4610.24N/12334.24WR?

KNAPPA is tactical call, which is 100% normal and 100% legal on APRS. In fact it would be if we didn't use these types of calls. KNAPPA is my off grid solar powered APRS station with also houses VARA APRS for 40m, a Winlink gateway on VHF, a VHF repeater, UHF remote base, multiple dual band rigs, a secondary HF rig, a couple computers, and some other things. With constant power outages, this is a must have thing.

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Duh!!? I had totally forgotten about tactical calls.? Somehow "KAPPA didn't look like a geographic place name to me.??? Also, I was being distracted by another issue.? A confused/clueless user somewhere around central Michigan, apparently not knowing how APRS works, has copied my settings into his 2 meter digipeater/igate including my callsign!? His igate is gating packets to the internet with WA8LMF-3 after the Q-construct.??

(This is an SSID I only use on HF tests - typically my 30M packet beacons use WA8LMF-2 and the 30M VARA beacons go out with WA8LMF-3. I have never used it on VHF.)

VARAdroid is a custom version of APRSdroid that I originally created to deal with VARA HF's slowness, which is now in my APRSdroid releases. So it originally allowed settable message retry limits, and the times at which it retries. It now also includes suppressing the acks to RF within X time, typically 60 seconds per ack. As responding to multiple IGates leads to more time on air, and more acks than we'd ever want to send sometimes.