Got the usual taken care of in town, grabbed a dinner to go at the Lucky Panda and headed out to the Search and Rescue building north of Bellingham for the WECG meeting. There were some SAR people there already so I sat inside and had my dinner. Eating in the car is nice - especially since it turned into a gorgeous day but sitting at a table is even better.
The next topic of study with our group is APRS communications. This is a digital mode that allows you to report your position (using GPS) and send short emails to another APRS equipped radio, to someone on the internet and sending and receiving text messages to a cell phone. Very cool and used a lot for Search and Rescue. Since I already have the digital modem for WinLink, it is a simple matter of adding about $60 worth of glue-logic and a GPS receiver and I can implement this on my own radios. Yes, they make a version for the Raspberry Pi so I already have $40 of the $60 buy-in cost.
This is something that I have been interested in - to get some hands-on experience tonight makes me want to get it set up even more. A couple of the 4X4 rescue people and the SAR people brought in their own rigs - amazing what you can do with a cheap chinese walky-talkie and the extra circuitry - very compact but powerful.
Leave a comment