Currently I have a quad band Wouxon (10/6/2m/70cm) , which while its OK, it could be better.
I was thinking of upgrading to a mobile radio that is remote mountable (not a lot of room up front in a classic land rover 110 to hide a radio body).
Built in APRS, and UHF/VHF and can also transmit into the high band VHF/VHF UK General frequencies would be nice. oh and a volume control that can actually reach 0 and have no noise from the speaker unlike the Wouxon that can’t achieve this)
If you want APRS then it will be Yaesu, don’t touch Anytone, reason, extremely complicated, buggy - software updates of which there are many cause more problems than they solve.
I have a Yaesu dual band fusion mobile which came with a blue tooth ear mic (similar to those for mobile phones). I can’t remember the model off hand. It works fine, but one complaint I have with it is that the remote head does not have the facility to initiate a scan. For that you have to get the fist mic extension cable (because the connection is only on the main unit and the scan controls are on the fist mic). In my experience that does somewhat negate the point of the remote head unit and blue tooth mic.
Between 2006-2017 (when I was doing a lot more driving) I used to run a dedicated 2m APRS system in the boot of my Ford Focus, using an old 20W Tait ex-PMR (single-channel) set and a Tracker2 from Argent Data Systems. The Tracker2 would connect either to a simple serial GPS receiver or a Garmin Nuvi sat-nav unit - which would also display incoming APRS stations, and even do messaging via its touch-screen.
It’s not difficult to hook up an APRS modem like this to any old 2m FM transceiver and fit it out of the way in the vehicle.
I’ve recently discovered this APRS project from a Thai amateur, based around an ESP32 board. I’ve built one as an iGate (to use with an old Bearcat scanner), but the comprehensive firmware apparently includes a mobile tracker mode too. If you already have a 2m FM radio and a serial GPS dongle, this would be a very low-cost solution.
He’s also done another version to work on a LilyGo T-TWR+ unit - which includes a (low-power) radio and GPS. I’ve got a UHF version of this (shown here alongside my T-Beam LoRa tracker):
I wanted to do this, but it needs a decent bandpass filter, I did have a look at the Nice RF website, who make those SA units, but I couldn’t find what I needed, although I think I may have one in a stored in a box somewhere
I have the Rsp Pi Zero and the audio injector card, but I need to speak to someone with Rsp Pi knowledge about how to fit the two together, there is a pinout, and it is possible that I am overthinking things here a little!
Yaesu FTM-400. It does everything you ask, especially the slim head that will fit on top of your LR dash. The internal speaker is OK, however I use inexpensive external speakers with my amateur and Motorsport radios in the Land Rovers.
For proper mobile, I use mine with a Blue Parrot bluetooth headset and boom mic. I opened mine up so can use it on highband and UK general, as well as the race circuit frequencies.
Am I missing something here? An APRS receiver is only as good as the coverage provided by the network of iGates and digipeaters in the target area where one intends to go walking / driving / etc.
When I first got Yaesu 2m FM HTs with AFSK-based APRS I experimented with APRS and was in general disappointed by its poor coverage in hilly terrain. Having recently got into 439-MHz LoRa APRS, I’ve been very impressed by how much better it is even with 100mW RF power than traditional APRS. It’s due mainly to the ~10dB process(ing) gain its Chirp spread-spectrum modulation provides.
It’s one thing to discuss the merits of one AFSK-FM APRS receiver with another but moving to a superior 21st century APRS solution is to be encouraged.
Can’t argue with the LoRa being better and more efficient. However, there is a lot of commercial equipment available for 2m APRS, and it is probably easier to use the APRS services via the screen on a FTM-400 than a T-beam or other such LoRa device.
Of course, if it is simply for tracking, then stuff a LoRa tracker away somewhere in the vehicle and use a nice short run of Gucci coax to a decent external antenna.
But if you are into APRS then you will have a foot in both camps, traditional FM AFSK on 144.800 and also LoRa on 439MHz (Europe) and you probably need both.
No off the shelf 2m LoRa gear springs to my mind. There’s also the choice of frequency. 146-147MHz is available for experimental comms and is available via a NoV in the UK. Whether it will be available long term is not known or will be available in Europe.
So much like old giffers like me remember dual standard 405/625 line TVs, narrowband 2m APRS and wideband 70cms APRS will be needed for some time to come.
I have the Yaesu FTM100 in my car. It was actually really good for me yesterday. I’ve got hundreds of memories stored of FM and C4FM repeaters and nodes throughout the country, so had it scanning for activity while driving from Norwich to Macclesfield. Ended up having several natters throughout the 4 hour drive, and even joined in with a CW training session being given by TV weatherman Jim Bacon G3YLA!
The APRS function works well, and I sometimes leave the beacon on if I’m on a long drive, but listening to BBC Radio 5 Live on DAB. I’m still to really work out what the point / application of APRS is. It seems a lot of tech for nothing more than the amusement of knowing where you’ve been received! I do have a personal use for it though. My mum now has APRS.fi bookmarked on her phone and checks on my progress on my long drives home from gigs!
I’m impressed! I never even managed to teach my parents how to set the clock on their VHS recorder. Only obsolescence solved that (technology, not my parents ).
I drive my Land Rover 110 to work and back most days. 58 mile round trip on country roads.
As well as Mo being able to track me, thanks to my MB7UAZ and Kit’s MB7UAB digi’s, I have pre-formatted APRS to SMS messages saved in the radio. I send one when I leave work and the other one when I’m ten minutes out.
It’s become a bit of a game and challenge for her to be pulling the dinner out of the oven as I walk through the front door.
As with most amateur radio stuff, I do this because I can, not because it’s simpler! I could turn on location sharing on my phone, but where’s the fun in that?
Yes, but one can now buy an off-the-shelf 439-MHz LoRa tracker from the SOTA shop fully configured with one’s callsign.
And incidentally, although 2m has better range there’s plenty of evidence both theoretically and anecdotal to show that UHF is a better choice in built-up areas like towns and cities, or for densely wooded or hilly area. On recent tests I’ve been amazed how my 70cm 100mW LoRa tracker managed to penetrate dense wet woods to iGates and digipeaters some 30-40 miles away.
And personally, for tracking I prefer my APRS tracker to be a different device from my VHF/UHF FM HT.
No matter how convenient some HTs make APRS interactions - and here I want to emphasise my earlier point - it’s not much use without having an adequate network of iGates and digipeaters in the target area.
To that end, it would be great to see other groups being formed in SOTA-summit-rich regions like the G/LD-focussed Cumbria LoRa group [CumbriaLoRa@groups.io | Home] that I belately joined to coordinate the deployment of iGates and digipeaters to serve SOTA activators and others in that region.
After my initial experiments 10+ years ago I concluded much the same, that it was a technology looking for a solution. Very recently though, I have been persuaded that - if coverage is pretty good in the target area - it’s useful for chasers awaiting an activator going on-air. I myself chasing from home recently realized I could go away and do something else for a while when I could see from the activator’s aprs.fi trail that he was running very late.
I hate to say this, but although I’m generally impressed with LoRa, I can’t use it as a reliable form of tracking across the country, I have used it around the Jct 10 area of the M1 and all the way up to Northampton. Northampton is where 2M APRS goes into a dead zone, but both fail in the Watford Gap until DRIFT when 2M APRS gets you MB7URG at Rugby, which covers as far as just past Lutterworth, there is nothing in here for LoRa even going up to down the highest point of the M1 at Copt Oak which is not that from G/CE-004, nobody has picked up my LoRa signal while mobile there. The same yesterday there were massive gaps with LoRA in Burton on Trent and along the A50 until I got to Darley Moor just before Ashbourne. The trouble is 2M APRS is seen as a bit old skool where you need a Motorola GM360 with a power supply and APRS modem and a antenna up a mast. As my link above for the WA1OKB Repeater you can built something a lot smaller and why not combine a 2M APRS digipeater with a LoRa one so both camps are covered. It is ironic where I live a local Repeater Keeper (vanity repeater) gave up with APRS because he claimed that nobody was using it, now there are plenty of radios out there with 2M APRS
).