APRS stands for Automatic Position Reporting System'

1
What IS APRS
APRS stands for Automatic Position Reporting
System. It has many many facets and uses.
Mac/WinAPRS is a program for utilizing mapping
and GPS technology along with Ham radio (packet)
for use in tracking real time geographically
related information such as the location of
vehicles or the status of weather.
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• Key Features
• Supports all standard Packet Radio TNCs
• Supports several types of map data
• Mac/WinAPRS map format
• Precission Mapping CD-ROM (Windows only)
• DEM (Digital Elevation Model) image files from
  USGS
• GeoTiff image files
• Standard GPS input (NMEA)
• Built in data bases including zip codes and
  airports
• Supports all standard callbook CD-ROMs for lookup
  of call signs

3

• Quick Start
• MacAPRS requires System 7 or later
• WinAPRS will run on Windows 3.1, Windows95, or
  WindowsNT, it will NOT run on OS/2
• For Windows 3.1, Win32S is REQUIRED
• Supports HF, VHF and dual mode TNCs for VHF and
  HF input
• Supports weather station input
• Supports GPS input
• Supports RDF (Radio Direction Finding) input
• Supports DosAPRS maps as well as the Mac/WinAPRS
  map format

4

• MacAPRS and WinAPRS are very similar.
• There are some feature differences but nothing
  major. The intent was to make both versions as
  full featured as possible.
• There are some things on the Mac that are not
  easily accomplished on the Windows platform that
  will never get implemented (such as the speech
  output of messages).

5

• The APRS family of software has many uses and is
  many different things to different people. APRS
  can be used for
• Tracking moving vehicles
• Tracking yourself as you drive around
• Fox hunts
• Keeping track of weather conditions
• Watching propagation
• There are many little things about APRS that
  users, both new and and old, get caught up on,
  these include path settings (WIDE, GATE, etc),
  and the use of gateways (HF to VHF and VHF to
  HF).

6
CONFIGURATION

• Originally the settings for WinAPRS would have
  been dramatically different from what was done
  for MacAPRS, this is due to the vastly different
  implementation of dialogs for Windows versus the
  MacOS.
• The software was written with the ability to read
  MAC dialog and out put Windows dialog.
• This made the conversion dramatically easier and
  made the dialog boxes for both versions
  practically identical.
• Under the SETTINGS menu there are several
  different settings dialog boxes. They may not be
  in this order.

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Home Page Map What you see when you start the
program
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Settings Tab
9
Station Settings Who you are, Where you are
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WinAPRS Settings Timing, logging, proximity alarms
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Setting up the serial ports
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TNC Type Selection
13
Specific TNC Settings
14
Position Report Rates
How many How often Alternate Paths
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Maps Selection Dialog
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APRS Path Settings

• RELAY Only use as first entry in path
• WIDE Should only appear once as first or second
  entry
• WIDEn-n Should only appear once as first or
  second entry
• TRACEn-n For temporary experimentation only
• GATE Means gate packet to HF
• NOGATE, RFONLY Mean dont gate to Internet
• TCPIP, TCPXX, qXX APRS-IS only

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Recommended Paths

• Mobile RELAY,WIDE or RELAY,WIDE2-2
• Portable RELAY,WIDE or RELAY,WIDE2-2
• Fixed DIGICALL, DIGICALL,WIDE or
  DIGICALL,WIDE2-2
• Digis No path
• Special Events RELAY or RELAY,WIDE
• Airmobile WIDE or WIDE2-2

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Recommended Beacon Rates

• Mobile 3 minutes minimum, SmartBeacon preferred
  with 3 minute minimum
• Portable 10 minute minimum, 20 minute preferred
• Fixed 20 to 30 minutes
• Weather 10 minute minimum, 15 minute preferred
• Airmobile 5 minute minimum

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Parts of this presentation have been Used with
permission from the WINAprs Software creators
Mark and Keith Sproul
20
QA

• Mark Davis KD5WIN
• MarkBDavis_at_earthlink.net