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Equipment

I am a GPS geek. I like to play with maps, and GPS units. I like to run around the woods with my Garmin eTrex Legend and search for Geocaches. If I’m not in the woods playing with my GPS, I’m on the road. I run my Garmin while traveling down the highways because the trip calculator has the perfect amount of geek factor for me. The other reason is the Garmin eTrex Legend with MapSource Metroguide V5 is pretty good for searching for addresses and other points of interest. It’s rather hard to get lost traveling with the Garmin either on the road or off. I also dabble in APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System), a digital mode used in amateur radio. The main part of the APRS operation is similar to the anti-theft systems used on cars, trucks and other equipment. Position data is sent out through RF at specified intervals. Currently I only run APRS from the home. I am running an I-Gate using the SSID of KC9AXZ. When traveling and I have internet available I run APRS without RF side and use the SSID of KC9AXZ-2 on my laptop. I should soon have a mobile tracker as well. I plan on building a Tiny Track 3 (TT3) kit, to run on my Yaesu FT-8800R. With this setup I will only be able to run a tracker. I will not be able to send or receive any messages. I will probably run that using the SSID of KC9AXZ-4. Running a tracker people should be able to see where I am by doing a simple search on www.findu.com.

UPDATE: I started running mobile APRS using my Yaesu FT-8800R and TinyTrak last November (2004). I was running this system using my Garmin eTrex Legend. I just bought a used Radio Shack Digitraveler PDA GPS (January 2005). I'm currently running the Digitraveler GPS that I modified to be powered by my TT3. This current setup is nice because it is less eye candy to the low life thieves.

  Currently I’m using an ADI AR-146 and a MFJ 1274 TNC to run my home APRS station. That is the radio equipment side of the station. The software side of the station, I run UI-View 32 and Precision Mapping version 6. This combination of software is very powerful and detailed mapping. This software combination is very hard to beat. 

  In the future I’d like to run the web server that is built into UI-View. By doing this, my site visitors should be able to search from this site, and see what stations I’ve heard. That is another project for another day though.

UPDATE January 2005: The webserver is currently being tested. The webserver is being run off my hope APRS laptop, and is not currently on a dedicated server. You can follow the link to see my UI-Webserver. Please be patient if the page doesn't come up, as I said it's being "tested".

  For a lot better description of APRS and it’s uses check the site of the person who “invented” amateur APRS. http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html

The ARRL also has the book:

APRS -- Moving Hams on Radio and the Internet

My TinyTrak3 information is here.