On Thursday, May 03, 2012 16:32:08, Patrick Ouellette wrote: > On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 09:21:16PM +0100, Colin Tuckley wrote: ... > > What you are also ignoring here is that AX25 packet is pretty much dead > > in Ham radio. > > No, I am not ignoring the ax25 packet status in ham radio. When I posted > to linux-hams I received a rapid response. There has been a consistent > trickle of kernel source patches for ax25 also. > > Like all things ham radio, there is a significant difference in the number > of people who participate in ax25 / packet depending on the area you > are in. APRS is fairly common in the metropolitan areas of the USA. APRS > uses UI ax25 frames. It is not infrequent to find the same location > running a APRS digipeater and a PBBS. There is a coordinated effort in > the state of Virginia to use ax25 as a part of the disaster communications > plan (http://www.vden.org/). Drat. I forgot about APRS. APRS has become fairly popular among hams, so much so that it now comes built-in to several radios, and even HTs (Handy-Talkies). APRS is a system for location reporting. It's also very commonly used to track experimental weather balloons at high altitudes, because apparently GPS stops working at around 30,000 feet. [The original high-altitude MIT balloon launch that many others have duplicated uses APRS, and I know of other groups using it for this purpose also.] APRS is also commonly used by hams to track themselves and/or their cars and loved ones as they drive around. The rigs used in cars likely aren't running a Linux OS, but the base station nodes that receive and report the APRS traffic probably are, and as Debian has been friendly to hams it's one of the more likely to be used there. -- Chris, KB2IQN -- Chris Knadle Chris.Knadle@coredump.us GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74
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