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Hello Rick,

The directions, which I posted, said to delete pulseaudio.

Looking at the instructions at , I can say the following:

?? - I agree with the statement "Due to the less than desirable receiving and transmitting qualities of a Baofeng, especially with the stock antenna, your range and APRS usefulness will be limited." though I would argue he should emphasize the lack of reliability and the real possibility that the final setup may never work with some Baofeng radios.? It really can be hit and miss with those low quality radios.

?? - The use of "rpi-update" to consume beta class Linux kernels is not a good idea for most users.? It should only be used as a last resort if something isn't working right

?? - This statement of "Lets remove pulseaudio from the system if its installed by default. Although it works fine on most systems, it does not play well with ARM based devices such as the RaspberryPi." is very old and removing it will cause a LOT more harm than good.?? Since he references a YouTube video from "Retro Tech & Electronics", I have to assume that video is giving old information as well.? If this is a brand new setup and you haven't invested a whole lot of work into it, I recommend to START OVER with a fresh copy of the Raspberry Pi OS which didn't have PulseAudio removed.

?? - Compiling Direwolf from source code is not required as those instructions will still only get you Direwolf v1.6 (via the Master branch) which is the same version as available in the current Raspberry Pi OS repos using "apt install direwolf"

?? - Depending on your location like if you're in a suburban area, you should NOT configure your RF or APRS-IF beacons to use WIDE2-1.? Using WIDE1-1 is far more appropriate to avoid over-flooding the APRS RF network

?? - You should set the Baofeng's squelch to be wide open for best operation.? I assume a setting of "1" is enabling some level of squelch which might stop your station from decoding some weak packets

?? - This documentation does NOT make any mention of tuning the audio levels which is bad.? You should shoot for a receive level according to Direwolf of 50 and this should be a combination of the audio output from your radio and the microphone gain on the sound device.?? For transmit audio tuning, there are lots of guides out there such as this one: .?? The Direwolf User Guide gives some details here and I have a recommended approach here as well:??

?? - It's unfortunate that the Xastir section of the guide makes no mention of enabling some better maps such as OpenStreetMap, etc.?

?? - I would argue it's not a good idea to configure Xastir to enable digipeating by default.

?? - I would argue it's not a good idea to configure Xastir to use WIDE2-2 by default.? As mentioned above and depending on your area, All Urban and most likely suburban areas should only use WIDE1-1.

?? - I would argue that no mention of Xastir's TXDELAY, TXTAIL, etc. is bad.? See below for more details on say TXDELAY and a TXTAIL of 30ms is way too long.? Many would ague that it's not needed at all but you will have to experiment with your setup to see if you need it.? If you do, nothing more than 10ms should be required.

?? - In the "Final Thoughts" section where the author states "I?m also unclear if it is counterproductive having both Direwolf and Xastir set to transmit and digipeat, or if Direwolf must be configured that way to grant Xastir that capability."? He is correct that it's counter productive.? You should only configure the beacons and digipeating in one place.? I personally recommend Direwolf to keep things simpler and your beacons will go out even if Xastir isn't running


Finally, this article makes no mention to the user of how to have the APRS setup automatically start.? I don't think the article has to tell the user everything but he/she should have at least hinted at it and where to go to learn how to do it.

?

? Next, which Btech cable are you using here?? Is it this one?

??

Yes

If so, what kinda of a sound card are you using with it because it's just an audio adapter cable with a simple circuit to support PTT.

? and

As pointed out on this thread, this setup uses VOX instead of a real PTT setup which is not great.? Another major gap in this article is that they aren't configuring the TXDELAY parameter.? Per the BTECH documentation, they state:

?? "In your Application for your device locate the transmit settings; and allow a 3-4 second preamble/delay on AFSK (so VOX has a chance to initiate on the radio)"

That would translate to a Direwolf setting of "TXDELAY 3000" or "TXDELAY 4000" which would create a three to four second DEAD-AIR transmission before each of your packets are sent.? That kind of delay is is absolutely terrible for the local APRS RF channel.? A good amateur radio APRS setup should only need 150-250ms of a TXDELAY and an excellent one is more like 20-50ms!?? What this means in the real world is that when your radio wants to transmit, it's going to be hogging the air waves with dead air way more than anyone else.? As such, if you still really want to run this setup 24/7, I *highly* recommend you do NOT enable digipeating or send many beacons as you'll be directly reducing the overall capacity of the local APRS network.

--David
KI6ZHD