GREAT APRS SETUPS FOR THE TM-D710 MOBILE 29 Jun 10 --------------------------------------------------------------------- WB4APR First REVIEW the Powerpoint: www.aprs.org/APRS-mobile.ppt And read www.aprs.org/D7xx/d700-faq.txt. The above PPT and file tells you how to get the most out of your APRS radio. Then use the information below for additional settings for the D710. The biggest difference is that the D710 is easier to configure the APRS hot buttons to be active, and the larger display to show the FREQUENCY of other D710 and FTM-350 mobiles. In the D710 USE STATUS 5! This is the only STATUS that will automatically insert your band B voice Frequency in your APRS packets. This is very important for maintainting commmunicatinos with others around you! I suggest: "[frequency] & V-Alert..." so others can also see you are monitoring Voice Alert also. NORMAL APRS OPERATIONS: (Same as D700) ----------------------- BAND-B: Use this band for your voice operations. Use it on 2m, 440 or even receiving on 1296 FM and many other commercial bands. CALL CHANNEL: Save 146.52 MHz voice simplex in side-A CALL CHANNEL. This is important for making QUICK Voice Alert QSO's... BAND-A: Set for APRS on 144.39, 1200 baud, TNC on band A. Set path to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in most areas, never more hops without serious thought. Set CTCSS to 100 Hz for Voice Alert with volume up. Save in memory 0 or wherever. Be sure to set Band A squelch way up so that the BUSY indication goes out between packets or your rig will never transmit APRS. The tightness has no affect on APRS, but if it opens and BUSY shows, the radio will never transmit packet. On the D710, to get the APRS hot-keys on the display, just cycle the KEY button until the APRS functions are displayed. Keep them on top most of the time for normal operation. SET D710 MENU: AUX-AUTO_PM_STORE OFF Without this, you can not save your favorite configurations in any of the PM's and have any hope that they will remain uncorrupted during operation. The default is ON, which means that everytime you use the radio, it will auto- matically save (overwrite) your favorite settings with whatever you were last doing with the radio. This is bad. Leave it OFF. That way once you have the radio configured and saved in a PM, then you can always go back to that by selecting that PM. So, now SAVE your APRS configureation in a PM. while the band A channel is the one with 144.39 and CTCSS 100 for voice alert. MEMORIES: Store this APRS/Voice Alert channel with CTCSS 100 in memory, say memory 1 and name it "APRS VA". Now turn CTCSS OFF with no Tones and label this "APRS raw". Save this in say memory 2. Now turn CTCSS ON again, and program it with a private PL tone. Save this as "APRSmute". Save this in channel 3 for example. With these 3 channels then you can easily configure APRS on the fly: Ch-1 144.39 CTCSS 100 "APRS VA " - for normal operations Ch-2 144.39 no tones "APRS raw" - for troubleshooting the channel Ch-3 144.39 CTCSS xxx "APRSmute" - for completely QUIET operation The real purpose of channel 3 is if you go to a club meeting or hamfest and there are so many voice alert operators that the noise is bothering you. DO NOT TURN DOWN SIDE A VOLUME! Instead, set channel 3 and you will not hear anything. The reason for this is that if you ever turn the volume down, you will forget and it might be weeks or months before you realize it and in the mean time you missed all those fun Voice Alert calls. If you want, you can also use channel 3 for private calls from trusted agents who know your private CTCSS, but then you lose out on all the Voice Alert activity. You can also set in a few digital channels for local DX clusters if you like using your D7 or D700 for monitoring them. Then you can QSY at any time to a DXcluster frequency and receive DX spots too. VOICE ALERT: This was why you left band A volume up but set CTCSS 100 to mute the speaker. This way, you dont hear any packets, but ANYONE can call you with VOICE on 144.39 to alert you by using PL 100. This allows anyone, anywhere, anytime (they are in simplex range of you) to call you by voice with PL100, because they KNOW you are listening on the APRS channel with CTCSS 100! PROXIMITY RADAR: A corrolary advantage of the Voice Alert Setting is that the speaker is 100% muted for all packets... EXCEPT simplex range packets from another Voice Alert D700 that is very close to you. His once a minute packets will act like a radar-ping, alerting you to his presence and the fact that he is also monitroing voice alert for a simplex QSO. You may go weeks without hearing anyone (simplex packet range is only 5 miles or so), but it is fun when someone comes in range. APRS is about *facilitating-communications*. With Voice Alert, you will never "pass- in-the-night" without knowing that someone is nearby, in simplex range of you that can ALWAYS be contacted with a voice call... Its like a free radar for other mobile APRS operators that are in simplex range AND listening. DIGIPEATING: We do not want most mobiles to digipeat most of the time. But we do want to be able to use them when needed. This involves what we call TEMPn-N digipeating. See the special web page all about D700 digipeater settings: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/aprs/d700digi.txt But basically it means: 1) Set UIDIGI to nothing! (we do NOT want you to be a generic digi!) 2) Set DIGIPEATER to ON (so we can at least digi via your callsign 2) Set UIFLOOD to nothing (so it is not used 3) Set UITRACE to TEMP so that your radio always supports TEMPn-N TRAFFIC REPORTING: ------------------ See also: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/d700-objects.txt This feature allows you to place TRAFFIC objects on the APRS system to alert other drivers of traffic porblems, slowdowns and or other incidents with only two button presses. THis works by changing your MYCALL temporarily to TRAFFC (or other OBJECT name) and then sending a few packets to put it on the map. You put this cofig- uration in one of the radio's Program Memories (PM5) as follows: MYCALL: TRAFFC-4