I am planning four days activating as many of the SOTA summits as possible in the Irish Wicklow mountains south of Dublin over the period 4th, 5th, 6th & 7th October.
I will be operating VHF FM on or around 145.500, beaming mostly east, so would appreciate anyone in western UK to listen out for me and of course anyone local as well.
I will be carrying an APRS tracker but I am not sure how much APRS support there is around Dublin. If they have a local digi then I should be visible on the aprs.fi website using the id M1CJE-2. I will also post an alert each day on the reflector with the following days planned summits.
I look forward to working a few of you.
73 - Andrew - M1CJE
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Shouldn’t that be EI/M1CJE - or when transmitting APRS are we allowed not to send the country prefix of where we are (as the lat/long gives that anyway)?
6 Letters max plus SSID on Packet Ed if I remember it correctly. So you cannot put CEPT prefixes in. Back in the day you would have set the CWID to say more but it’s 19 years since I last did any AX25 stuff so maybe the CWID and Packet callsign were the same field.
Don’t worry about it, we don’t have it 
If I can be off any help while you’re over or , local advice on the Dublin/Wicklow hills etc feel free to give me a buzz on + 353 86 4027652 . You will find 2m activity very very low, if you can operate HF you might have a little bit more fun
73
Declan
EI6FR
Andrew,
You should be able to get aprs packets out via the Mt Leinster or Cavan digipeaters.
73, John EI3KA
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Further searching brought me to this item on the web (not that it clarifies it, rather makes it more complex!):
If still supported I like the idea of using the CW-ID feature to send the “actual - legally formatted - callsign and prefix” that Andy mentions and that may be the best solution if the APRS tracker / PC software allows the use of that. As it is not restricted to length and is also sent in “open” morse code rather than encapsulated in the APRS data transmission.
It appears that most people simply leave everything set to the ID from their home country, which as this is a transmission on the 2m band in a different country, where normally a prefix to the call sign is needed - I would say could get you in trouble with the authorities as you are not correctly ID ing your station. It’s like me operating in Holland as DD5LP/M.
73 Ed.
I stand corrected on the APRS thing, it’s not something I use. However, there is excellent cellphone coverage so self spotting on Sotawatch should not be a problem. Join the SOTA Ireland Facebook page and post when qrv and a few locals may pop up. Overall though, vhf activity is poor. Careful selection of summits on the eastern side of the range will help towards GW/G and there is a lot of activity in GI. Summits on the west of the range tend to be blocked towards the UK as far as VHF is concerned.
I can suggested some linkages that will work, although the shorter days of October will be upon us. My email is ei6fr@gofree.indigo.ie if you want to PM me as your plans develop
73
Dec
ei6fr