The question mark icon is for stations with unknown positions. A station that sends a status message, telemetry, or positionless weather report first (as far as your station newly listening is concerned) means that YAAC doesn't know where to plot it or what its symbol is. So YAAC guesses the station's location by assuming it's near its first digipeater (assuming the digipeater's position report has been heard). This feature is called "vicinity plotting".
Once YAAC hears an actual position report with an APRS symbol code from the station, it will change the icon and move it to the correct location on the map.
While the station's actual position is not known, and either it wasn't digipeated and heard by an I-Gate whose position isn't known, or digipeated by a digipeater whose position isn't known, the position remains at latitude/longitude (0,0). The button on the map toolbar with a big 0 on it will jump the map to that location.
Note that, if you don't like it, you can turn vicinity plotting off in the expert-mode configuration dialog.
Hope this helps.
Andrew, KA2DDO
author of YAAC

-------- Original message --------
From: Michael WA7SKG <wa7skg@...>
Date: 1/4/20 15:36 (GMT-05:00)
To: [email protected]
Subject: [yaac-users] Strange Position Reports
I see periodic objects show up with the icon of a gray circle with a red
question mark. They are many miles from their actual location. Clicking
on the icon gives me a box of either seemingly garbage characters or
just a blank in the comments field. Many of these are fixed sites, so I
know the location is not correct. Some are mobile, but when I talk to
them later, they were never in the area.
What's up with that?
Michael WA7SKG

Hmmm... vicinity plotting can also work in the opposite direction to guesstimate the position of "stealth" digipeaters (those that do not transmit position reports of their own, and only meet their legal station identification regulations by UITRACE-inserting their callsign into digipeat paths). When a regular station's position report is digipeated by a "stealth" digipeater, YAAC attempts to approximate the position of the digipeater as being in the centroid of all the stations it has been heard to digipeat.
How do you know these digipeater positions are incorrect? How are you checking this?
Please provide some callsigns of the participating stations so others can help you interpret what is going on.
Andrew, KA2DDO
author of YAAC
________________________________________
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Michael WA7SKG <wa7skg@...>
Sent: Saturday, January 4, 2020 11:51 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [yaac-users] Strange Position Reports
Still confused. The two items I see most are digipeaters. They show up
on my map near (varying in about a five mile radius) a local digi, but
one is actually 90 miles away and the other is 130 miles away with
significant terrain between them and the local digi. They are persistent
in that they move around a little bit, but are shown for days at a time
in the same area. I do have "vicinity plotting" turned off, yet they
still show up. They never show up in their actual locations.
I only have RF items on my map. Nothing from the Internet is displayed.
Just another of those APRS mysteries I guess.
Michael WA7SKG
Andrew P. wrote on 1/4/20 6:47 PM:

The question mark icon is for stations with unknown positions. A station
that sends a status message, telemetry, or positionless weather report
first (as far as your station newly listening is concerned) means that
YAAC doesn't know where to plot it or what its symbol is. So YAAC
guesses the station's location by assuming it's near its first
digipeater (assuming the digipeater's position report has been heard).
This feature is called "vicinity plotting".

Once YAAC hears an actual position report with an APRS symbol code from
the station, it will change the icon and move it to the correct location
on the map.

While the station's actual position is not known, and either it wasn't
digipeated and heard by an I-Gate whose position isn't known, or
digipeated by a digipeater whose position isn't known, the position
remains at latitude/longitude (0,0). The button on the map toolbar with
a big 0 on it will jump the map to that location.

Note that, if you don't like it, you can turn vicinity plotting off in
the expert-mode configuration dialog.

Hope this helps.

Andrew, KA2DDO
author of YAAC

-------- Original message --------
From: Michael WA7SKG <wa7skg@...>
Date: 1/4/20 15:36 (GMT-05:00)
To: [email protected]
Subject: [yaac-users] Strange Position Reports

I see periodic objects show up with the icon of a gray circle with a red
question mark. They are many miles from their actual location. Clicking
on the icon gives me a box of either seemingly garbage characters or
just a blank in the comments field. Many of these are fixed sites, so I
know the location is not correct. Some are mobile, but when I talk to
them later, they were never in the area.

What's up with that?

Michael WA7SKG

On Jun 19, 2020, at 10:31 PM, Michael - NA7Q <mike.ph4@...> wrote:

?

I understand this thread is old. In fact I stumbled upon in because of the "BAMBAM" station that is operating under very poor ways..

I'm the owner of NICOLI (Nicolai Mountain) and various others APRS stations. But I see NICOLI was discussed by Jeff, so I'll address it.

So NICOLI operates in the most friendly of ways as a WIDE1 digi. It doesn't spew garbage beacons like BAMBAM or many of the other stations around. It beacons a position 1 time per 10 minutes, as is the legal requirement, AND does NOT use a path. I think that is very important. Because I have multiple igates within range, and is heard by many other igates, there is no reason to add a path.?

It also has 1, yes just 1 telemetry beacon that is sent 1 time, yes 1 time PER hour with a 1 hop path. This equals 7 beacons per hour, and only 1 hop in that duration. Pretty good compared to most that just clutter and congest the network beyond belief.

Another fun fact, NICOLI only uses 5 watts on a low gain antenna on top of the 30 foot tower.?

Why does it reach so far? Location location location.
Nicolai Mountain has an incredible path through the Gorge and into the east side almost across the entire station of Washington and Oregon at times.
Frequently my Trout Lake station is able to be heard on Nicolai under normal conditions. Everything about this digi is done with one thing in mind. Provide coverage to an area that isn't covered, reduce congestion, block as many digi beacons as possible that shouldn't be using a path. Unfortunately the unit has the maximum block slots filled up. So some junk gets through. Like BAMBAM....

I've been wanting to get a hold of KI7RUS because of BAMBAM. It's using a seriously bad path, and is able to be heard across the entire state of Washington and Oregon. I heard it coming across a digi in Idaho last week! It's outrageous. It's not even located at the location it beacons. It beacons too frequently for the weather and the telemetry. Which in his case is every 5 minutes. APRS.fi and APRSDirect only update at 10 minute intervals for weather and telemtry. So beaconing more often does nothing.

I hope to get a hold of that guy at some point, and I hope that he is understanding. All too often these guys are not.?

73
NA7Q