Mobile Information Resource; Situational Awareness; Participation - Kenwood TM-255A Product Manual

2 APRS OPERATIONS written by Bob Bruninga, WB4APR

2.1.3 Mobile Information Resource

APRS was never intended to be just a vehicle tracking system (GPS was added in the 1992 time
frame when GPS became affordable). APRS is much more. See the Kenwood mobile display
below. This is the STATION LIST which shows the nearest 100 stations heard. In this case, not
only are the two stations of AB9FX nearby, but also his current voice operating frequency is
visible. Also, we can see that this transceiver is in operating range of three voice repeaters that
are also identifying themselves as objects on APRS as the locally recommended voice operating
channels.
Figure 2-1 TM-D710A/E Front Panel showing Station List

2.1.4 Situational Awareness

APRS provides situational awareness to all operators of everything that is going on in his local
area, whether it is weather reporting, traveler info, direction finding, objects pointing to EchoLink
and IRLP, or traffic reporting and emergency response. All of this while providing not only
instantaneous operator-to-operator keyboard messaging capability for special events, but also an
always-on Voice Alert backchannel between mobiles in simplex range. There is even an APRS
interface to the Winlink system called APRSLink so that mobiles can send and receive email
without needing a PC. Think of APRS as a signaling channel to reveal all amateur radio resources
and live activities that are in range of the operator at any instant in time.

2.1.5 Participation

Although APRS offers phenomenal capabilities for managing and displaying local information, an
overarching design assumption was that in most applications, APRS would not be used by most
operators at an event or by every member of a club, and very few devices could actually report
their own position. The design assumption was that manual entry and management of large
numbers of objects would be a major function of APRS and APRS operators in order to fully
represent the situation. Further, Bulletins and Announcements would keep everyone informed of
the same information at the same time. Operator Messages would communicate important
information in the background without encumbering voice nets.
4 TM-D710A/E
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