A lot more APRS with a mobilinkd / 2015-08-27

I tried APRS (automated packet reporting service) before and wasn't convinced I was going to use it much. A later attempt in tracking my location on an amateur-related trip from Apeldoorn was also not much of a success.

But, on our recent holiday in the southern part of England I also tried recieving what was available on the 2 meter and 70 centimeter amateur bands and I noticed at a campsite in the New Forest that there was a lot of traffic. I decoded this by putting the android tablet with APRSdroid close to the radio. Part of the traffic was decoded and this gave interesting things such as announcements of local repeaters. I also heard a lot of packets that weren't decoded by the setup with the microphone of the tablet.

Display on aprs.fi of my trip today

So my interest in APRS was revived. And I knew of a much nicer solution for APRS with Android devices: the Mobilinkd bluetooth APRS interface. So I bought one and 'connected' it to my Android tablet. It recieves a lot more local packet activity than my first attempts, I see digipeated packets from as far as northern France. And today I tried transmitting my location on a short trip. The results weren't ideal since the trip was a lot further than the logged points, time to look at the audio settings for transmit.

APRS setup with radio, Mobilinkd and APRSdroid running

The Mobilinkd is quite small, it can hide behind my Wouxun KG-UVD1P radio.