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problem with APRS comment field

IowaRV9Dreamer

IowaRV9Dreamer

Well Known Member
First of all, big thanks to Sam and all the other pioneers who went before and made it easy for me to follow :D

I bought a MT8000 FA and have hooked it to a 296 in the car for some ground testing. All has been going well, with 1 minor oddity.

You can see my tracks on aprs.fi... track on KB1DON

For the first few days, I noticed on aprs.fi that the comment field was displaying "TinyTrak3". This is the green line in the aprs.fi popup box that is directly under the speed. I think the field is labelled "STATUS" in the configuration software.

You can see the field working on the westmost track points (display the past 7 days).

Something must have changed recently - because now I get garbage characters in that field - like "+4}" I think this might have happened when I turned on smart beaconing. You can see it when you restrict the track to the past day.

Does anyone have any info on this field?

dave
 
Hi Dave,
I'm no expert, but I'd check three things:
1. Reduce the power a bit and see if those characters stabilize

2. When running Smart Beaconing, I had to extend the GPS "on" time to 10 seconds, otherwise I'd get some wierd happenings

3. There is some maximum total # of characters in the status/text fields and it is shared between the "primary" and "secondary" setups.... If I make them the same in both setups, I can make the text string longer before an error pops up in the TT3 application.

I'm sure Byon, Allen or Sam will have some good ideas also.
 
duh! Ha.... I guess my item 2 does not apply as you are using an external Garmin to supply the GPS info. I should read and understand before engaging my fingertips on the keyboard!

Let us know if you have any success.
 
IowaRV9Dreamer said:
First of all, big thanks to Sam and all the other pioneers who went before and made it easy for me to follow :D

I bought a MT8000 FA and have hooked it to a 296 in the car for some ground testing. All has been going well, with 1 minor oddity.

You can see my tracks on aprs.fi... track on KB1DON

For the first few days, I noticed on aprs.fi that the comment field was displaying "TinyTrak3". This is the green line in the aprs.fi popup box that is directly under the speed. I think the field is labelled "STATUS" in the configuration software.

You can see the field working on the westmost track points (display the past 7 days).

Something must have changed recently - because now I get garbage characters in that field - like "+4}" I think this might have happened when I turned on smart beaconing. You can see it when you restrict the track to the past day.

Does anyone have any info on this field?

dave
Click to expand...

Dave,

I don't have any ideas on the strange comment field other than to recheck your tracker's config to make sure the field is blank. I don't think engaging SmartBeaconing would impact the comments. You might post a screen shot of your config to see if anyone sees something out of whack.

One possibility is something going on with the aprs.fi server. If some changes have been made to the server setup, it might render your comments differently. However, I flew yesterday and didn't see any problems with the comments. I have my FCC callsign in the comments field and it's set to send with each beacon.
 
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