Schlatter Family Site

More APRS Screen Shots

Here are some shots of WinAPRS screens from my home computer.  What you are looking at are position reports from various amateur radio stations, operating packet APRS stations on 144.39 MHz.  The display shows each station's call sign (W4HH, K4ITV, AD4CR) and a symbol, selected by the individual operating the station.  Most folks select the house with antenna symbol. 

The map above shows a little over half the US.  Note that the stations are all clustered in fairly close proximity to my location in Bristol, TN.  For the map below, I zoomed out to encompass the entire US.  Note that in this zoomed out view the stations all clump together into an indistinguishable mass.

For the next view (below), I zoomed in close to my location.  Note that station call signs and symbols show up clearly; I am W4HH.  Look for the symbol that says "hikers."  That's a couple of hikers on the Appalachian Trail, which passes a few miles to the south and east of me.  They must have been running battery-powered APRS equipment.

Notice that some of the stations have vehicles as symbols.  That means that they have a GPS-APRS tracker in their vehicle that is broadcasting their location.  The green stars indicate a station that is configured as a "digipeater," that is, it retransmits APRS signals from other stations.  Most of these are guys who sit on hills and run fairly high power.  The registration on this map is a bit off; it shows me (W4HH) as being above the Virginia state line; actually, I am about 100 yards inside Tennessee.

Here is a screen shot from Saturday, December 5.  Note the station using the symbol of a truck, call sign W7LUS-14.  I do not know this fellow but I see him all over the place.  He has a tracker in his 18-wheeler and shows up all over the map.  Note, too, the red line extending from his truck in a westerly direction.  This means that his tracker is transmitting his location as well as his direction of travel.

The following screen shot was made on 3 May 2002 using my brand new Sony DSC-P31 digital camera -- really slick.  The camera saves photos to a "memory stick" -- it's a very small memory card, smaller than half a stick of chewing gum.   I have a USB memory stick reader that the computer recognizes as a disk drive.   Make the photo, pull the memory stick out of the camera, plug it into the reader, and save the photo(s) to the HD.  This is a screen shot of my WinAPRS application.   My station, W4HH-4, is in the center of the photo.  The screen is an old Toshiba laptop that runs the WinAPRS 24/7.

Click here to return to my APRS page.  On that page are links to web sites that have lots of information about APRS.