Balloon Launch Information Bulletins

[Robert Bruninga]

> This is the heads up for the Vienna Wireless 
> Society VWS-6 balloon flight.
> ... is intending to launch VWS-6, an amateur 
> radio balloon flight, this Saturday around 
> 10:00 am EST from Strasburg, VA. 

Andre, Can we get the following back to the VWS powers that be:

*** Please put out local APRS bulletins on the status of the
launch so that mobiles will be alerted to this activity.  It
doesn't take much to send out a bulletin to be received by all
the mobiles in real time:
You can even do it from your D7 or D700:

1) Since this is a regional activity, go ahead and violate the
usual 2 hop path receommendation and use 3 hops.  This should
cover the 6 state area.

2) Send your bulletins using the message address of BLN# where #
is the number of the one-line bulletin.

3) Use sequential BLN# numbers if the information is new.  But
you can also re-use the same BLN# to overwrite (or in effect
cancel) a previous bulletin.

4) Your bulletin can even contain the text [Balloon in view] and
any APRS software with voice code will speak it.  The D700 will
speak some words, but I forget the vocabulary.

APRS is an information distributino resource.  Plesae use it to
keep everyone informed about the progress of this launch.  Not
just tracking the balloon!

Bob, Wb4APR