I was able to place our order today for 13 UDRCs for 9 of our members. It will be exciting to see these come on the air over the next several weeks. At Tuesday's meeting in Ferndale we can talk about how we can help each other get these packet stations up and running. I waited until the very last minute for payments to come in but wanted to be sure that NW Digital Radio had time to get them boxed up and into the mail. Because of the storm, we canceled our trip to Friday Harbor and I was not able to pick up the boards personally, as we had planned. I talked to Bryan Hoyer and he says the order will be in the mail Monday morning and he thinks I should get them on Tuesday. Personally I think we have about a 70% chance that they will be here in time. I will wait until the mail comes before I head to the meeting in the hopes that the boards make it.
I talked with Art today and offered to do a presentation on how to maximize the use of the tools that
aprs.fi offers us to evaluate our own APRS packets and see how they move through both RF and the internet. We can take a look at some of the software that you might want to use on your own station.
The new thing I learned today, is how to place an 'Object' into the APRS network. Go to:
aprs.fi and search on: 'MBARC'. Zoom in real close, even turn on satellite view. It's pretty cool. The source of this object is an RF signal coming from my QTH using my Direwolf ID, WB7FHC-5.Have a look. You will see just how useful an OBEACON can be.