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Coverage in Western Canada

corbinace

Active Member
Greetings,

I am wondering how the coverage might be on a trip up the Alcan Highway to Alaska and in AK itself. Or maybe if you cutoff through the trench how high would you need to be to hit a repeater.

I am very new to the tracking idea and really only know what I have read here in the forum so please excuse my ignorance, I am trying to fix it.

I am registered to take my Technician test on the 18th and have been looking at the cheat sheets. Wish me luck

Tim.
 
I was waiting for someone with firsthand experience on that route to respond, but here's my take.

If you go to http://aprs.fi/?addr=fort saint john, canada&mt=m&z=8&timerange=3600 you can see that there are some ground stations in Fort Saint John, but then you don't see any more along the 97/1 highway until Whitehorse. There is one near Mackenzie at the south end of Williston Lake if you are flying the trench, but again none shown north of there on that route until Whitehorse.

I wouldn't count on being able to hit a ground station that is more than 150 miles away (though I know some folks have done better than that). Now there might be digipeaters and igates that exist that aren't shown on the aprs.fi map. But just based on the map, it looks to me like you won't be getting very good tracking on that segment.

I was up in B.C. a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get any farther north than Kamloops. Tracking was very good, but that's pretty civilized territory compared to where you're going. In fact the worst tracking I got on that trip was on the way back to SoCal, from Bridgeport to Independence CA, flying the Owens Valley down the east side of the Sierras. No packets got picked up for about 150 miles there, even though the aprs.fi map shows a digipeater high in the White Mountains near Bishop. Maybe it was down that day.

So, it can be hard to predict. I've also been surprised to get better tracking than I thought I would in some places. Have a great flight and good luck with your Tech exam.

--Paul
 
Tim,

Will let you know in a few weeks. We leave Thursday headed for Calgary, then eventually over to Prince George and on to Dease Lake and finally Atlin, BC (I got a buddy lives near there). Not sure what route we will take, as it will depend on weather. My choice will be either from PG to Smithers and up the Cassiar, or up the old BC railbed (lots of "emergency only" strips along there and its the most direct route to Dease). I don't expect to get much if anything on APRS for this section of the trip, but will post what I find (or you can track me, N 7965A). Coming home to Reno, I hope to fly down the W side of BC, but probably east of the Coast Range. Whatever, it will certainly be an adventure!

cheers,
greg
 
Thank you gentlemen,

Paul, I visited your link and see what you mean about sparse stations. I have it in mind to go to Valdez in the 3rd week of August and thought it would be nice for my wife to be able to follow since cell service is so poor in a lot of places. But alas, it looks like it is not to be.

Kind of looks a bit sparse in most of the wild west. I guess that's why we like it.

Greg, That is super timing, I will indeed keep an eye on your progress. I had thought of coming back using the Cassiar just for a change of venue, but as you say, the sky will dictate.

Thanks again, guys.

Tim.
 
APRS station coverage area

One more little trick for aprs.fi. Go to the website, and in the upper right hand corner you'll find a little icon that has three colored circles. Click on it and you'll get an approximate coverage area plotted for each station that's based on its elevation, antenna gain and transmit power.

I think the coverage rings assume that users are on the ground, so airborne performance should be better - but at least you'll have some idea of how far the station can "see".

Hope this helps...

Dave
 
Dave,

Good tip! I just went to the coast yesterday and looking at the circles I clearly have better coverage than expected, although the full circles (figured out the toggle bit) cover most of my route.

Any way to show ALL station coverage (not just the ones that pinged me)? This would provide some additional insights into what coverage might be expected in remote areas. OK, figured this out too. For future reference, just need to "show all" (rather than a specific callsign) and make sure that the scale is not too large (otherwise one just gets a bunch of red & blue squares).

Cheers,
greg
 
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Just a note to say thanks for the words of encouragement. I passed my Technician test today and am now waiting for my callsign so I can order my tracker.

My wife congratulated me on turning into a hamster when I got home, still trying to decide if that is a good thing or not:)

Thanks again, Tim.
 
Tim,

I'm just back from Canada and it looks like my transmitter quit just before I landed at Calgary. I have no tracks beyond that and certainly should have had some today coming to Reno from Seattle, where I know there are stations. Haven't opened the wingtip yet to have a look. So, sorry, I probably can't give you any updated info on repeaters/coverage in W Canada. I did have a fantastic flight down over the Coast Ranges yesterday - CAVU and really no place to land most of the time, so I'm glad the fan kept turning. I'll be posting some pics later in the week.

cheers,
greg
 
Problem solved

Turns out it was a fuse. I didn't up the fuse capacity when I added the radio. Worked fine for a while, but apparently finally blew when I was over Canada (yeah, blame the Canadians :D). Replaced the fuse today and works fine again. So, I'm afraid that the test was a bust, so I guess I'm going to have to go back next year and try it again.

greg
 
Update for 2011. Since my fuse failed last year and I didn't really get to test the APRS coverage, I figured that I needed to rerun the experiment. So on Thursday this week, I will be headed north again to Vernon BC, then on to Atlin BC on Friday, and Rackla (field camp not on any maps so don't bother to look for it), YT on Sunday. All weather permitting, of course. Anyone interested can see how the tracks go. Call sign is my tail number: N7965A.

cheers,
greg
 
Tim and others,

Coverage in southern BC seems pretty good. I went from Reno to Vernon BC and then Smithers and basically had coverage the whole way. This even while I was flying pretty low to stay under the clouds (3000 msl - you can see where I had to detour for weather) in the western part of the flight to Smithers. Today enroute up the Cassiar, there basically was no coverage between Smithers and Dease Lake. I was at about 6-7000 ft msl most of the way. I picked up coverage again headed west out of Dease (again about 6-7000 msl). Here's today's flight from Smithers to Whitehorse:

http://aprs.fi/?call=N7965A&mt=roadmap&z=11&timerange=21600

Cheers,
greg
 
welcom to Canada, eh!

Greg,
glad you made it ok, the weather has been the weirdest I have ever seen...little windows of beautiful, interspersed with unflyable!...frankly don't know how the heck you picked thru it all.

looking forward to more updates as you continue your trip!
 
Now in central east Yukon. Amazingly, I got APRS signals out until I started to descend to land (landing is another story). So you have an idea of where I'm hiding out for the next couple weeks.

cheers,
greg
 
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