Hi All
I have been trying to digipeat some APRS packets through some of the APRS satellites but I can’t even hear any packets from the usual suspects. So I set up some observations on my ID-568 stations and managed to observe some occasional but rare and weak packets from BHUTAN-1, UiTMsat-1, Maya-1, PSAT-2 and Lilacsat-2 which is very strong.
Thinking I have a problem with my station I looked at many other stations un-vetted observations and found a similar lack of APRS activity.
By the way, is it ethical to vet someone else’s observation? There are heaps and heaps of un-vetted observations. Is that so their stations don’t look bad with too many bad observations?
How will that affect the statistics?
Does anyone know what happened to all the Satellite APRS activity on VHF?
I have been sidetracked lately when I started to take an interest in L-Band.
The only truly active (sometimes) digipeaters are NO-84, PSAT-2, Falcan-Sat, Aisat, and ISS (may have missed one or two).
Bhutan, Uitmsat, and Maya have never demonstrated real digipeating capability. I have never seen a packet from LilacSat-2, either.
I believe vetting “old” observations is very much encouraged. I would suggest that you only vet other’s observations if you are 100% sure of what that specific observation is supposed to look like, though.
VHF digipeaters have been mostly turned off lately. The old standby of the ISS digipeater seams to be super flaky now. Even when it is on (which hasn’t been for some time), it’s mostly deaf and takes some work to get digipeated. NO-84 is still easy to work, when it’s on - which is rarely. PSAT-2 is also somewhat “deaf”, as it seems to really need a good doppler corrected uplink to work well.
Well, it appears that the next gen ISS radio program is either fully funded or almost fully funded, so hopefully it will be going up to the ISS soon. That would mean more APRS, SSTV, and possibly even FM repeater activity.