Today I sent a test sms-spot (I was not on the summit) and found out a bit later that my call appeared on aprs.fi like this:
This seems to be a new service by @ON6ZQ to make all the activators appear on APRS. Generally I think it’s a good idea but what about the activators that use APRS by themselves? E.g. @OE9TKH today on a summit looked like this on APRS:
So maybe it’s possible to exclude all the activators that send out APRS beacons? What do the other APRS users think?
Very interesting job!!!
As far as I can see t is other way of spotting. I usually send out APRS beacons from summits as eb2gkk-7, perhaps any other unified symbol can be used in order to avoid confusion with our own most used “Hiker”.
73 de eb2gkk
One thing I notice from yesterday is that some of the objects posted to APRS-IS have a prefix appended, presumably to indicate operating in a country different from their callsign ( DL/IN3ADF and DL/OE5EEP for example). Yesterday though my SOTA spot for the call VE2DDZ/W2 was posted to APRS-IS as VE2DDZ with no suffix. The W2 suffix to a Canadian call indicates I was operating in the W2 call area of the US.
What is reported is the fact that there is a SOTA activation of a particular summit by an activator, not the exact position of the operator.
Arguably, this is the most interesting point to display to let people know about how much SOTA activity there is, and where SOTA summits are located in the regions they are looking at on APRS maps.
Activators who want to report their actual position use their own equipment and typically identify with a -5 or -7 SSID that can be used for filtering.
However, as the name field length is limited to 9 characters, summits references like VE2/AT-001 could not be shown.
Also, the APRS “clients” usually only allow for filtering on the “name” field (not on the comment). So it would no longer be possible to “follow” an activator trip.
Update on the current status of my experimentation with publishing spots and alerts to APRS:
SOTA2APRS reports
every activator “spotted” on SOTAwatch to APRS-IS with a “Hiker” symbol (“H[” ) and his current frequency. Example: ON6ZQ 007.032MHz SOTA activation ON/ON-001
every announced activation (“alert”) with a “SOTA” symbol (“S;” ). Example: ON/ON-001 SOTA activ. planned on YYYYMMDD HHMMz
Activators who would prefer NOT to be listed on APRS when their activations are spotted on SOTAwatch are welcome to let me know, and I’ll make sure their callsign is added to the “black-list”.
SOTA2APRS is purely experimental, and is meant to make the SOTA related activities known to a larger public, while helping chasers to follow the activators and activators to be chased.
It might be adapted or stopped without notice depending on the feed-back I receive.
Hint: On APRS.fi, you might want to try filtering (right of the screen) on “Source callsign = ON6ZQ” and setting “Show last” and “Track tail length” to 24 hours.
