[amsat-bb] Re: Broadcasting

[Bob Bruninga]

> but isn't 99.9% of all APRS broadcasting?  
> You never really expect a response from anyone...
> Most of it is amateurs BROADCASTING their locations, 
> no emergency traffic...

That is simply because too many people were completely mislead into thinking
of APRS as a vehicle tracking system which is just wrong.  It was nothing of
the kind.  It evolved from the 1980's desire to get away from one-on-one
packet BBS's with NO human contact back to HUMAN-to-HUMAN live information
exchange.  

But then in the mid 1990's GPS came out and so did a lot of stupid trackers
and now we are stuck with this light's-on-nobody-home scenario in a lot of
people's minds.  See how wrong these assumptions are:
http://aprs.org/APRS-tactical.html

My focus in APRS has always been about live contact.  That is why now all
new APRS radios not only communicate the position of the other stations, but
also their voice contact frequency in every packet. See:
http://aprs.org/localinfo.html

Bob, Wb4APR