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*            ATGP Plan for 20X improvement in 2020!  Bob, WB4APR         75
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We can shorten the time to Golden packet success and improve communication 
of changing status both by an order of magnitude by using 9600 baud, having 
the end units beacon at higher rates initially, and using MSGS to ALL to 
inform others of changing status:

1) Everyone program radio to 9600 baud at default rate shown below.
2) Or if you are presently the “end unit” temporarily set 1 min
3) Program your STATUS TEXT with only your callsign
4) Send MSGS to ALL to inform everyone of what’s happening
5) Once end-end golden packets are reported, 3m stations drop to 5m also
6) End units remain at 1m throughout for long term statistical analysis

Station:  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15
TX-rate:  1   3   3   5   5   5  10   10  10  5   5   5   3   3   1

At 9600 baud, a packet at each digipeater takes 1.5 seconds (3 slots) for a 
total theoretical channel capacity of 40 ppm, but we must cut that to 8 ppm 
for optimum ALOHA channel throughput.  The sum of the above beacon plan is 
less than 5 packets per minute so that leaves some overhead for some 
additional status messages and still be under the Aloha rate.  Further, 
packets are shorter, and messages only retry 5 times.

Have a second APRS radio (HT ) with stub antenna (only hears your station) 
for monitoring all packets your station is successfully digipeating up and 
down the line.  This leaves the D710 control head free for messaging and 
operating without losing the sense of what is going on.  Be sure to set D72 
HT menu 3U0 to Display Always so you see every packet every time even if 
it is a dupe and be sure this HT BCON is OFF!.

This process can improve the event more than an order of magnitude in 
efficiency and current status communication .

Bob, WB4APR

I sketched a map of the potential other mountain tops within 100 miles or 
so of the ATGP backbone and put the map at the top right of the ATGP page:
http://aprs.org/at-golden-packet.html

The plan has to be such as to not burden the backbone with unnecessary 
dupes.  There are several ways to do this:

1) Digi +600 so their copies do not desense backbone, but extend to locals.
2) Have them use beams so that they only hit one backbone node.

Just playin with ideas.  I took the shadow topo map of the USA and looked
for mountains that might have links.  I have no idea of the individual 
links, but wanted people to have an idea of where to investigate.  We have 
a year to figure out if this makes sense.

Bob, Wb4APR