APRS on your bike

[rboe]

APRS. Automatic Packet System (you need a Ham radio license to use)
http://www.aprs.org Explains the gory details
aprs.fi Is one of the sites you can go to to see aprs in use by hams.

One of my Guzzi buddies showed me this and a mutual buddy that was corrupting him - and it got rubbed off on me so now I'm doing it too.

Long story short, you take a UHF radio (2 meter) that has GPS built in or attached, a modem or TNC, and account on APRS then your radio can send out beacons that can then be picked up by APRS stations and the info passed on to the website mentioned above and folks can track your progress. Pretty much in real time.

For the wide open Arizona we have had to add power amps to up the 5 watts broadcast power to 45 watts to reach far flung APRS stations; otherwise it works pretty good. I tested my setup (sans amp) with the pickup this past weekend.

The bike kit is being assembled; I've had to order a top case (I bought a Kenwood TH-D72A handi-talky, GPS and TNC built in, but she is not water proof, just water resistant; the Yaesu vx-8dr is water proof but has a less robust GPS and no TNC - classic trade offs).

We have a Guzzi Rally in Datil New Mexico so the three of us are getting our APRS setups built for this rally. Once done I should be able to transfer it to the CB1100 with little difficulty (I think the stator has enough poop to run it!).

You guys may be more familiar with Spot (https://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=101) or the DeLorme InReach (http://www.inreachdelorme.com) system for contacts with the outside world, especially for emergencies. APRS is a third way; which may or may not make more sense depending upon your needs and wants. As I get into this a bit deeper I wonder if the other systems wouldn't have been cheaper!

So if there is interest I'll post up the completed kit in a week or so (closer to "or so" ).

[Randy B]

If it can deal with heated grips, I think a small amp should be fine.

[Pterodactyl_imp]

G'day Arbo. There is interest, believe me. A brief skim over the website opened a glimpse of another world. Fascinating. My interest is triggered by a background, as a boy, of building crystal receivers of varying degrees of sophistication. As a soldier I also did signals training and I can't tell you how much "enjoyment" I got from lugging around an A501 set (http://www.qsl.net/vk2dym/radio/A510.htm) and trying to construct various aerials in wet, dark and leech ridden rainforest.

How things have changed since the days of reading type written manuals: http://www.qsl.net/vk2dym/manuals/A510_Operator_P1.pdf

I am unlikely to do anything like this myself but will follow your project with great interest. Good luck. Makes an old bloke like me mutter "What'l they think of next". Yes, what indeed. Come to think of it an A501 strapped to a CB would complete the retro look.

Cheers

[Cormanus]

I know very little about this, but is it the same or similar technology that has allowed the development of Internet and mobile apps that can let you monitor aircraft and shipping movements in real time?

[rboe]

APRS was invented and is maintained by amateur radio people for civilian use. Bits of it connect to the Internet but it's operation does not depend upon the Internet (save for the bits that you need to see where you are going on line).

It does depend upon GPS for the tracking part if you wish to use that feature (that is the part that got me into ham radio) but being a packet protocol there is a messaging side too. Folks attach their weather stations to the system so you can get real time weather at a particular location.

I had a buddy that was a Ham back in high school and tried to interest me but you had know Morse Code; which I had to do for Boy Scouts and that was such a poor experience I avoided it like the plague for over 45 years.

When I was in college, for the second go around, one of the kids in our program was a ham and he had a new fangled 2 meter radio. Boy that thing was cool! Still, I resisted.

Then the Internet came along and that pretty much took any wind out of my sails for the ham radio thing. Now that I'm retired I figured why not!

[flynrider]

Interesting. Some of my fellow backcountry flyers have Spot units installed in their planes. The lack of repeaters in mountainous wilderness areas makes the satellite option a bit more attractive. Looks like APRS satellite access is improving and looks like a viable alternative.

I'd love to see a post on your setup once you've got it done.

[rboe]

When I tested it this weekend (larger antenna on top of the pickup roof) I did not hit a lot of beacons on I-17. A buddy (ham expert) tried it on his bike using a Yaesu handi-talky and could not hit many beacons while in the White Mountains so he added (and advised us to add them too). I think he went as high as 50 watts. Then he was able to hit the beacons. Mr. Scotty was right; demand more power!

The Spot is very single task and harder to communicate with (cheaper plans and devices leave you with a couple pre-canned messages) but you don't have to worry about different antenna's, adding amps or crashing where there are no beacons. The handheld ham radios are much more flexiable (but there has to be a desire or need to use them for other than tracking devices otherwise you have bought too much capability).

Tracking is what everyone gloms onto when they see it, but it is much more than that. Don't ask me as I'm too focused the tracking part.

Naturally; there are repeaters for the 2 meter and 73cm bands (our radios are dual band) so if we so choose, we can program in the repeaters along a route and have the capability to talk on the air. Either to request aid, render aid, have Mom tell you to hurry home and ride safe (assuming she has a license too; everyone that uses the ham bands needs to be licensed).

Because my radio is not fully water proof, needs an amp to up the transmitting power and a larger antenna to receive or transmit better (think bigger ears) I need to protect it in a top case. Needs to be plastic so the GPS antenna on the HT can see the sky. I bought leads to bring power to the case, I have an adaptor to power the HT off the bike battery so I don't wear out the HT's battery (being an hand held I can remove it, install the regular whip and use it alone, like on a hike - with the built in GPS it has the features to log my hike and help me get back to the starting point - which I've never needed but some folks do), power for the amp and leads for the antenna. Which is about 3' foot long.

Should be fun.

[kennyw]

I am interested as well. Mainly in getting a radio installed so I can use a repeater or simplex voice while I ride. But APRS would be nice as well.

[rboe]

I have it installed and working. Yay! Added a Mirage BD-35 amp, turns out it can be very problematic hitting the APRS beacons with just 5 watts of power. I'm up to 45 watts now. Not enough to brown the toast, but she hit the beacons.
Above shows the bits loosly tossed in the top case. Below, a bit more organized (the cigarette adaptor and converter goes behind the mounting board normally - I pulled it out for clarity). The other two shot show the power feed coming in and the antenna feed coming out.
I used hook & loop tape to hold the power adaptor into the cigarette lighter port instead of the ABS pipe. It turned out to be too cludgie. I also used hook and loop to hold the arms down but the sticky won't sticky. I even tried RTV. No joy. May have to resort to a mechanical fastner. Dang!

If you go to aprs.fi, plug in KG7UHR for the Phoenix area you should see my symbol pop up. If you do a generic search, say over a 12 hour period you can see all sorts of activity. It is especially interesting near ports as some boats use APRS.

Tracking is pretty primative, bread crumbs are posted, then straight lines connect the dots. No attempt is made to follow roads or trails. This gets real bad if the sender has set up a long time frame between sending in packets.

[Cormanus]

Because I'm curious, I went to arps.fi. It said:

It works!

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