Winterfest Hamfest object

[Bob Bruninga]

> Sadly, Bob Bruninga is constantly selling his products.

What products?  Never had any APRS devices for sale since mid 1990's of something called a MIM module. Hardly sold any. No oher hardware.  I even put my original APRSdos software in the public domain and stopped accepting donations in about the 2000 time frame.

> I used to get angry at him for selling on my repeater.

I do remember running into some old grumudgen in NoVa back in the 1993 time frame on a family trip to Charlottsville where I left my original APRS laptop on the voice channel while talking on a NoVa repeater...

> He would come up on the repeater with his BRRRRR. 
> and once someone asked about it,
> he would SELL them the device.

Didnt have anything to sell.  I was using a Kantronics TNC like any other packet person already had.  ANd like I said, that was an incident back in 1993 before there was ANY APRS infrastructure.

> When challenged, he would continue to sell unless 
> his daughter was in the car and he was embarrassed.

Yes, over the years, I have run into a number of old crumudgens on various repeaters who have humiliated and chastized LICENSED young kids who dare to talk to their family or anything else on a repeater that does not match the narrominded biggoted beliefs of a few old farts.  I took care to protect my kids from these guys.  Getting kids interested in radio is a fragile thing.  One old fart can ruin it for a kid for life.

> He once gave me shit on MY repeater and said he 
> would personally pay to put his crap on our 
> repeater.  Once I told him, because of the
> site, it would cost over $3,500 in combining 
> costs he shut the heck up and went away.

Then I guess you missunderstood the concept.  Back then, that early concept for integrating with a voice repeater didn't take anything but a TNC monitoring the audio of the repeater input receiver.

> He is an ass.  He is just trying to make money 
> for himself.

I think you are confused.  There is nothing that I sell or make any monitary benefit whatsoever from since the sharware donations I used to accept back in the 1990's for my original APRSdos software.

No one uses my APRSdos in a decade and back then I even  eliminated any registration process, published the sourece code for anyone to use, and have not sold a single thing since or accepted any donations.

I do not sell anything else for ham radio either.  Have not in more than a decade.  I dont even sell my old radios..  You should see the pile of junk after 40 years of this hobby.

I "promote" APRS because too many people completely missunderstand it as some kind of vehicle tracking system which it IS NOT and was never designed to be.  It is an information distribution channel for providing real-time local information *to* mobile operators on heads-up displays to give them useful information about the local area and anything going on in ham radio that they might not be aware.

Hence the encouragement for someone involved at winterfest to Transmit this local info for the benefit of other travelers either heading to the hamfest or not aware of it but passing nearby.

Bob, Wb4APR





>
>--chip
>
>On Feb 24, 2011, at 11:16 AM, tacos-request at amrad.org wrote:
>
>> Message: 4
>> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:54:45 -0500
>> From: "Bob Bruninga" <bruninga at usna.edu>
>> To: <tablesales2011 at viennawireless.org>
>> Cc: tacos at amrad.org, Bob Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu>
>> Subject: Winterfest Hamfest object
>
>> Some APRS operator in the Vienna Wireless organization needs to be
>> putting
>>>
>> out a HAMFEST object to alert all APRS mobiles of the hamfest.
>> There are
>> Several things that all hamfest planners should be doing:
>>
>> 1) Start beaconing the object on the air starting 2 weeks prior
>>   a) the object name would be HFEST-26a (shows the date)"a" is the
>> first
>> one this weekend.
>>   b) The object text contains 146.91 MHz so that mobiles can
>> instantly TUNE
>> to the talk-in by pressing the auto-QSY button on their APRS radios
>>
>> 2) Place the GPS coordinates on ALL hamfest flyers and literature
>>
>> 3) Plan on having a PC (with internet set to APRS.FI) or a stand-
>> alone APRS
>> laptop at the talk-in operating position.  This way the talk-in
>> operator can
>> SEE what is going on out there, and where everyone is.  This
>> tremendously
>> assists him in helping people.
>>
>> 4) Once a day in the week prior, also send out APRS bulletins
>> announcing the
>> event.
>>
>> Now that there are a total of 8 fully integrated APRS radios on the
>> market,
>> everyone can see this info on their radio front panels.    BUT ONLY
>> IF THE
>> ORGANIZERS TX IT.
>>
>> I'll put a sample object on the air here from Annapolis, but I'll be
>> gone
>> Friday and all weekend, so I cannot maintain it nor assist with all
>> the
>> other APRS details.
>>
>> Please have your APRS folks review the APRS HAMFEST web page:
>>
>> www.aprs.org/hamfest.html
>>
>> Bob, WB4APR
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