The Automatic Postion Reporting System is a way of having your GPS position automatically tracked by radio as
you fly. Your radio is periodically sending your GPS position to a
receiving radio (in the chase car) where an icon representing you can be displayed
on a moving map display. Your driver knows where you are at all times.
Vince Endter has assembled a low-cost system that you may be interested in.
Here is some preliminary information that was published on the
Oz report. As he fine-tunes his setup, he'll be adding more info and photos
to this page.
Vince Endter's system
My system was $79 for the GPS, $30 for APRS TNC, and $130 for a dedicated
radio (some assembly required). It would be nice if some of the bigger comps
could put together about 10 of these (or any aprs) and put them on the
gliders in the top 10 places. We could them watch the contest from the web.
I wanted a dedicated radio so I can transmit the APRS on a different
frequency than my primary radio. I used to use the same radio that I talk
to my driver, but other pilots complained of the APRS screech. The way I
have it set up, if one already has a spare GPS and Radio, all they need is
the Tiny Tracker.
Russ Brown Russ.Brown@West.Boeing.com writes:
Vincent needs to stress that the Tiny Trak TNC is a kit so one needs to be
soldering-iron-literate. Good price on the kit, though, only 25 bucks,
that's a lot less than I paid for the Mic-E kit three years ago.
Cables aren't included with the Tiny Trak, but are inexpensive. Of course
with external cables you can run into reliability problems - shorts and dirt
in connectors - things you don't have to worry so much about with the more
expensive Kenwood TH-D7A with the TNC built-in.
Davis Straub adds:
I just checked
http://www.randmcnally.com
and it looks like the $99 GPS is still
there. In the past you could get an additional 20% off for registering at
the site, so if that offer still stands, that's about $80 for a great GPS,
not bad!
Maybe this is the kind of price breakthrough that will get more people
excited about APRS/APTS. I hope Vince puts together a web page on lessons
learned while assembling and programming his Tiny Trak.
Now I set the transmissions to occur every 2 minutes at high power.
I have purchased a third party 1100 mah replacement battery for my Kenwood.
I no longer use a dipole antenna in the glider, just the standard Kenwood
rubber ducky.