*************************************************************************** * ATGP 2018 Report for SHACKMAN 75 *************************************************************************** I'm heading out of town tomorrow, so I wanted to write down a stream-of- consciousness summary of today's AT GP attempt. My first word would be "AWESOME". As in how awesome it is to watch the chain coming together knowing at least some of the places that stations are activating. My family went to Springer for the first ever AT GP attempt, so I know that area (we actually packed the gear up to the official trail staring point). We've visited Gatlinburg and from there up to Clingman's Dome. My son, KJ4DXK, and I activated it once for SOTA complete with packing our Yaesu 817 and BuddiPole along the AT from the main road. We've been to the top of Mt Washington a day after they finally cleared the last snow one spring. And I can only imaging the beautiful views from the other locations (and I've seen and appreciated the pictures). I really wish the mountains were closer to Florida (but leave the winter air far away). Anyway, on to the view from the shack. I set up my MultiTracks and checked various messages for who was where and what time they expected to arrive. At 9:15am, I got an APRS-IS message from W3GK telling me that COMERS-4 came on the air...in Raleigh, but coming through the KF4YLM-1 IGate 140 miles away. Turns out they had their coordinates wrong or not selected as it moved to the proper location a bit later. Note of encouragement: If you can APRS track your mobile, even if it's only APRS-IS tracking with a cellphone app, it can make it easier to see the deployment coming together. Around 10:00 stations started appearing through the few 144.340 receive IGates. MDMNTS-7 came through HWKSBL-6 and into the K3FRT-10 IGate. Watching and waiting added AOMTN-5 (via HWKSBL-6) at 10:46. ROAN-3 came through the N4YH-10 IGate at 10:50. At 10:52, CLNGMN-2 digipeated ROAN-3's packet and into the N4YH-10 IGate, so at least two digipeaters are known functional along with 5 stations. By 10:56, I had seen packets from stations 2 through 7. At about 10:40 I noticed an FTM-350 beaconing APRS from Mt Washington, KB1POR-9. I had a nice APRS (-IS on my end, RF on his) QSO with him at 11:00 and suggested that he try contacting WA1KLI and/or Katahdin on 445.925 Simplex. More on that later. At 11:09, I saw a ROAN-3 packet digipeated by SPRNGR-1, so add another (likely 2) operating digipeaters to the known list. I had seen CLNGMN-2 just before 11:00 and SPRNGR seeing ROAN says that CLNGMN must be digipeating. At 11:19, WG3K let me know that squelch was open at HWKSBL-6 but it was now fixed which explained the lack of seeing that station for a while. By 11:20, I was seriously questing whether ROAN-3 and/or COMERS-4 were digipeating. 1-3 were working fine, and 4-7 were showing up, but I didn't see any cross-polination between the two chain segments. WG3K took that information and ran with it because at 11:48 he informed me that ROAN was working on the digipeat problem. AL0I had reported that action via the AT ANSRVR after WG3K had asked the question. In the meantime, at 11:23, N1JCM-12 reported via AT ANSRVR that "mtw13 digi dead voiceok" (sic). We were seeing stations 1-9 via IGates and 12 had reported seeing 11 back at 10:34, so we really need Mt Washington. I got on the phone to MTSTJO-14 who had UHF voice comm to Mt Washington and suggested that they see if KB1POR-9 would be willing to join the activity, even though the FTM-350 doesn't digipeat. They agreed and worked on configuring for MTWASH-13 and HOP7-7,HOP7-7 paths. By 11:50 I was working with SAMSPT-10 which seemed like it wasn't bridging between 11 and 9. Got MTSTJO in contact with SAMSPT to see if they could ensure the D710 was properly configured. In the end, the configuration was correct, but a bad piece of borrowed coax was leaving SAMSPT-10 mostly incommunicado. Thankfully, a spare was on hand and the station made it on the air sometime later. At 12:03 SPRNGR-1's comment indicated that they had seen 1-4, so apparently ROAN-3 was digipeating by then. By 12:07, SPRNGR-1 was seeing 1-5. Note for the "encouragement" list: It's really, REALLY helpful if you update your comment to indicate what stations you have copied! By 12:10, GDHILL-8 reported that they had seen stations 1-9, further confirming that ROAN-3 must be digipeating. But 1-3 were still not seeing anything north of 5. At 12:40, HWKSBL-6 reported that they were copying packets from AOMTN-5, but not vice versa. That explained the observations. Packets from the south were able to get north, but packets from the north were not getting to the south. WG3K helped AOMTN-5 relocated their station which improved things a bit, but definitely not reliably. See his e-mail about the 9600 baud link test between 5 and 6 at the end of the day. At 12:41 I requested SAMSPT-10 to work with CAMLBK-9 (beaconing as CMLBK-9) and GRYLCK-11 to see why further north stations are not coming through. SAMSPT-10 had seen 9-7, 5, and 3 by then, but nothing from the north so either he wasn't copying -11 or -9 wasn't copying him. It was 13:04 when SAMSPT-10 starting appearing and we received the report that the issue was bad coax. At 13:40 we received notice that MTWASH-13 had "voice from kataden" (sic). So Tim & company were on station and safe. At 13:48 we observed a MTWASH-13 packet digipeated by HWKSBL-6 and subsequently to an IGate, so the north part of the chain appears to be coming together. By 14:40, the northern folks were working out an alternate route to get from Katahdin into the chain. They figured that contact could go from Katahdin to Mt Carlton to Mt St Joe to Equinox and subsequently points south. But by the time they were working that, it appeared that the link between MTSTJO-14 and EQINOX-12 had gone sour. No idea what happened there. Some stations were anxious to call it a day, and the northern links were not likely to be recoverable, and even though the weather was gorgeous on Mt Katahdin according to Tim, in consultation with Bob we decided to call it a wrap at 15:00. We made efforts to get the word out via the APRS chain as well as discrete contact points along the chain, so I hope everyone got a positive indication and didn't have to figure out that the event was over when the traffic dried up. If so, please accept my apology and let me know (privately) where you were so I can try to fix the notifications next time. I have to say I enjoy the event, even though I don't get any of the fresh air and view benefits. I appreciate being a part of it and envy those of you that are actually in the field and doing the "real" work. As WG3K told me at 10:16 as the event was unfolding "This is painful to watch from a distance. How do you do it?" He's so right! I may have mis-stated who did what, and I know I haven't mentioned everybody that did something exceptional, but thank you to ALL and apologies to those. I'm headed off on a vacation tomorrow, but if you've got logs, please post them to the Yahoo group so others can analyze them before I get back. Especially if you have raw RF logs from anywhere. The APRS-IS logs are woeful because only the first copy of any packet comes through, so if a packet started at HWKSBL-6 (which had a direct link to an IGate), the APRS-IS won't see any other indication of how far that packet traveled. But a raw RF log from, say the IGate that was copying 1-3, would show that packet in all of it's digipeated and HOP7-reduced glory. Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - 2018 AT GP Shackman (formerly Potato) PS. If you were ever curious about how I watch the event unfold, here's a screen shot of my second monitor. See: http://aprs.org/hamtrails/Shackman/Shackman-screen-2018.png 15 APRSIS32 MultiTracks, one centered on each station object. They run on a full APRS-IS feed with View/None and View/Tracks so that I only see the centered station and anything else that moves. Unfortunately, this also means that I don't see the event station, even when it does get to the APRS-IS, but that's fine by me. I also run a FilterTest windows using d/HOP* and add in any dedicated 144.340 IGates with an e/ filter. (Just don't ask me why the black labels turned white in the screen cap!)