Hello gopher enthusiasts and passers-by. It's September, which | |
means it is ROOPHLOCH [1] season! Unfortunately the month flew by, | |
as it always seems to. Guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore. | |
Regardless, this is a pretty low key entry. I'll expand a little | |
more on the actual entry [2], which again used the APRS to gopher | |
tailphlogger bashed together in Python. After slacking all year, I | |
finally got around to sending message acknowledgements which will | |
stop the APRS client from retrying upon receipt. Although I don't | |
have any client that sends a message without requesting an | |
acknowledgement, which would be nice to test so the program will | |
only send an ack when requested. Anyways, I will clean up the code | |
from all the flotsam from testing and debugging and will put it | |
somewhere in case anyone else wants to poke at it. | |
For the attempt itself, I tried sending a couple line entry via an | |
HT strapped to my bag during an off road motorcycle trip, but I | |
was either too far in the hole or too low power to be heard by a | |
digipeater to send it along. The other attempt at low elevation | |
and highway speeds also did not bear fruit. I probably could have | |
climbed the hill and stood still long enough to get a good | |
transmission, but I really wanted to test it in everyday and often | |
suboptimal conditions. | |
A test via the cell network did show that the tailphlogger was | |
still operational, so on the next attempt that is what I decided | |
to use. I suppose the adage "two is one and one is none" holds | |
water in this case. I will perform more tests with the HT and see | |
how I can make it work more reliably. The topology of digipeaters | |
have changed so I guess I'll just have to map out where I can get | |
good signal to communicate once more. | |
In the end, I still find it fun to play with the APRS system, and | |
making these fun little widgets improve the utility of the network | |
for me. Keeping the spirit alive for WB4APR (SK). | |
Tags: #ROOPHLOCH #APRS #hamradio | |
[0] Text-only version | |
[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/announcing-roophloc… | |
[2] APRS tailphlogs |