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Author Topic: APRS Uses with EMCOMM  (Read 372 times)

KC2YLM

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APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« on: January 23, 2021, 07:51:32 PM »

Am wondering how different groups may be using APRS for emergency communications?

TIA, KC2YLM-Phil

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RADIOPHONE

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2021, 08:24:17 PM »

That is a very good question.

I have always wondered what any use of APRS could be.
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G8FXC

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2021, 03:39:17 AM »

That is a very good question.

I have always wondered what any use of APRS could be.

I tend to agree with you! For a long time, I did not have any APRS capable devices - and I didn't miss it. Recently, I have bought both an FTM-400DE and an Anytone 878 - both APRS equipped - and I did configure both, at least briefly. But I soon lost interest. Half the time, my Anytone reports that I'm somewhere in the back streets of Foshan in China - I've never worked out why it does that - I can only guess that that is where it was manufactured and it feels homesick!

Why do we do it? I really don't know - probably the same reason why some feel obliged to tell the world everything they do via Facebook! Perhaps it's an Andy Warhol fifteen minutes of fame thing? I have read of a couple of cases where police have used APRS tracking data as evidence in a prosecution - which should be a good reason to turn it off!

Martin (G8FXC)
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N8AUC

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2021, 09:49:18 AM »

In truly emergency communications, I don't see a lot of value to APRS.

But for public service events, like marathons, bike-a-thons, etc., it's pretty useful. Say that runner XYZ is at mile marker 18 on the marathon course, and can't continue, requesting a ride back to the start/finish. If you're the net control and your SAG vehicles have APRS trackers aboard, it makes it very easy to identify the closest SAG to pick up the runner. It's a big help in providing the requested support in a very timely manner, without tying up the net to obtain position reports from all the SAG vehicles on the course, while trying to figure out who to send. Likewise with medical units. If someone gets hurt and needs medical assistance, APRS makes it much easier to know who the closest medical unit is to an incident involving injuries. It enables you to get medical assistance to an injured participant much faster.

If you're working a parade, if you embed an APRS equipped ham in the first and last units in a parade, it enables you to see how the parade itself is progressing along the parade route, in more or less "real time". Since street closures and their duration for a parade are usually specified in the parade permit, it lets you open up the streets along the route after the last unit has passed, which returns disrupted vehicle traffic to normal quicker than you might be able to otherwise.

When we work such events, our net control position is usually located in the city's emergency operations center. The benefit to that, is that we get direct access to law enforcement and other support functions, and the operations staff gets real time access to event communications. Comments we receive from operations staff frequently indicate that they get better situational awareness from listening to what the hams are saying, than they get from people who get paid to work an event, like police officers and sheriff's deputies. We often get operations staff poking their heads inside the radio room, to check out our APRS computer display. They are often amazed at the "technology" that a bunch of unpaid volunteers can bring to bear on events like these, even though to us, APRS isn't really that big of a deal.

If you usually don't do this kind of thing and are wondering what a SAG is, SAG stands for "Support and Gear". We usually have 6-8 (or more) vehicles that provide support in a decent sized marathon, and another 6 or more medical units. Medical units could be private ambulances contracted to an event, or even municipal EMS units who are assigned to an event. The actual number varies with the size of the event, and how spread out the course is.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But these are my observations and experiences after having been involved with such things for over 30 years.

73 de N8AUC
Eric
« Last Edit: January 24, 2021, 10:07:14 AM by N8AUC »
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G8FXC

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #4 on: January 24, 2021, 10:03:06 AM »

In truly emergency communications, I don't see a lot of value to APRS.

But for public service events, like marathons, bike-a-thons, etc., it's pretty useful. Say that runner XYZ is at mile marker 18 on the marathon course, and can't continue, requesting a ride back to the start/finish. If you're the net control and your SAG vehicles have APRS trackers aboard, it makes it very easy to identify the closest SAG to pick up the runner. It's a big help in providing the requested support in a very timely manner, without tying up the net to obtain position reports from all the SAG vehicles on the course, while trying to figure out who to send. Likewise with medical units. If someone gets hurt and needs medical assistance, APRS makes it much easier to know who the closest medical unit is to an incident involving injuries. It enables you to get medical assistance to an injured participant much faster.

If you usually don't do this kind of thing and are wondering what a SAG is, SAG stands for "Support and Gear". We usually have 6-8 (or more) vehicles that provide support in a decent sized marathon, and another 6 or more medical units. Medical units could be private ambulances contracted to an event, or even municipal EMS units who are assigned to an event. The actual number varies with the size of the event, and how spread out the course is.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But these are my observations and experiences after having been involved with such things for over 30 years.

73 de N8AUC
Eric

Surely modern mobile phones do a better job of this, don't they? I have an application called Glympse on my phone - with a couple of clicks I can send my location to an accuracy of a few feet to anyone else (or a group of anyone elses) who has Glympse on their phone. I can set my phone to broadcast my location for the next twelve hours. And there is no need for ham radio licences or high end HTs...

Martin (G8FXC)
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N8AUC

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #5 on: January 24, 2021, 10:09:57 AM »

In truly emergency communications, I don't see a lot of value to APRS.

But for public service events, like marathons, bike-a-thons, etc., it's pretty useful. Say that runner XYZ is at mile marker 18 on the marathon course, and can't continue, requesting a ride back to the start/finish. If you're the net control and your SAG vehicles have APRS trackers aboard, it makes it very easy to identify the closest SAG to pick up the runner. It's a big help in providing the requested support in a very timely manner, without tying up the net to obtain position reports from all the SAG vehicles on the course, while trying to figure out who to send. Likewise with medical units. If someone gets hurt and needs medical assistance, APRS makes it much easier to know who the closest medical unit is to an incident involving injuries. It enables you to get medical assistance to an injured participant much faster.

If you usually don't do this kind of thing and are wondering what a SAG is, SAG stands for "Support and Gear". We usually have 6-8 (or more) vehicles that provide support in a decent sized marathon, and another 6 or more medical units. Medical units could be private ambulances contracted to an event, or even municipal EMS units who are assigned to an event. The actual number varies with the size of the event, and how spread out the course is.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But these are my observations and experiences after having been involved with such things for over 30 years.

73 de N8AUC
Eric

Surely modern mobile phones do a better job of this, don't they? I have an application called Glympse on my phone - with a couple of clicks I can send my location to an accuracy of a few feet to anyone else (or a group of anyone elses) who has Glympse on their phone. I can set my phone to broadcast my location for the next twelve hours. And there is no need for ham radio licences or high end HTs...

Martin (G8FXC)

From a purely technology perspective, you're 100% correct. But operationally, it costs the city more to assign a paid staff person to keep an eye on that. Volunteers (who pay for and bring their own toys themselves) are cheaper to use than paid staff. Also, in some remote areas, like where some of the bike-a-thons go, cell coverage can be very spotty.

One of the bicycle events we cover every year, lasts for 4 days, and covers a 328 mile course, most of it through very rural area. There are many stretches of that event where there is no cell coverage.

Now if you're talking about a real emcomm situation, your cellular infrastructure may be damaged or destroyed by the event, in which case you won't have cell coverage until the cell companies can effect repairs (or activate their COWs - cell site on wheels). Think in terms of the aftermath of a category 5 hurricane, or a major earthquake, or a wildfire. Training (from FEMA) teaches that in the aftermath of a real disaster, you may not get any outside help for up to 72 hours.


« Last Edit: January 24, 2021, 10:26:38 AM by N8AUC »
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K6CPO

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #6 on: January 24, 2021, 10:52:03 AM »

In truly emergency communications, I don't see a lot of value to APRS.

But for public service events, like marathons, bike-a-thons, etc., it's pretty useful. Say that runner XYZ is at mile marker 18 on the marathon course, and can't continue, requesting a ride back to the start/finish. If you're the net control and your SAG vehicles have APRS trackers aboard, it makes it very easy to identify the closest SAG to pick up the runner. It's a big help in providing the requested support in a very timely manner, without tying up the net to obtain position reports from all the SAG vehicles on the course, while trying to figure out who to send. Likewise with medical units. If someone gets hurt and needs medical assistance, APRS makes it much easier to know who the closest medical unit is to an incident involving injuries. It enables you to get medical assistance to an injured participant much faster.

If you usually don't do this kind of thing and are wondering what a SAG is, SAG stands for "Support and Gear". We usually have 6-8 (or more) vehicles that provide support in a decent sized marathon, and another 6 or more medical units. Medical units could be private ambulances contracted to an event, or even municipal EMS units who are assigned to an event. The actual number varies with the size of the event, and how spread out the course is.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But these are my observations and experiences after having been involved with such things for over 30 years.

73 de N8AUC
Eric

Surely modern mobile phones do a better job of this, don't they? I have an application called Glympse on my phone - with a couple of clicks I can send my location to an accuracy of a few feet to anyone else (or a group of anyone elses) who has Glympse on their phone. I can set my phone to broadcast my location for the next twelve hours. And there is no need for ham radio licences or high end HTs...

Martin (G8FXC)

What about areas where there's no cell coverage?  My group works bicycle and equestrian events that go out into the back country of our county where cell coverage is spotty at best.  As long as we can hit a digipeater or iGate, we can put out an APRS beacon.
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NA4IT

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #7 on: January 24, 2021, 05:35:53 PM »

Am wondering how different groups may be using APRS for emergency communications?

TIA, KC2YLM-Phil

Search and rescue. APRS can be done on a voice repeater if you add a pause or two before the location sentence.
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N2ICZ

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #8 on: January 26, 2021, 05:44:13 AM »

In truly emergency communications, I don't see a lot of value to APRS.

Depending upon how one defines EMCOMM, here is how I have used APRS when power was out, the internet was then unavailable (in my house) and cell phones were spotty (it was during a major storm here on the Jersey shore). We no longer have a land line telephone.  I was able to:

1.  Send a text to my daughter via SMSGATE and let her know that the XYL and I were OK.
2.  Send an email via EMAIL-2 (Path)

I could have (but didn't) used Winlink via APRSLink  and have access to email that way. 

Again, it depends upon how you define EMCOMM. I define EMCOMM as being "personally" ready to get some sort of communication out there.  IMHO, APRS on a large scale (ARES/RACES/CERT) would be limited but certainly useful as a backup. 
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KG7LEA

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2021, 07:15:52 AM »

APRS is on the long list of skills to be honed. It's best use is with mobile stations, like at public service events and it is put to good use then. If the communications emergency involves deploying mobiles like for a windshield survey, it might be use assuming 1) the operators know how to property configure their beacons, and 2) the net control is equipped to manage the information. At an annual two-day bike ride there are two large computer screens, two operators, and a lead. The various net control stations are arranged to view the screen. Considering the predictable shortage of trained volunteers in an emergency, the time and effort might be better spent with pencil and paper, and a good sense of situational awareness.

I don't see much use for APRS messaging since we already have radios and the messaging interface (keypad on microphone) is cumbersome at best.
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KD4UPL

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2021, 03:56:27 PM »

Here in western Virginia we also have many public service events (bike races, foot races, and horse rides) that go thru very rural territory with no cell phone coverage. We haven't made much use of APRS for these events yet but it's starting to happen as people get more familiar with the technology and more and more radios have it built in.
I use APRS messaging quite often via the SMSGTE to communicate with my wife when I'm working in mountainous areas with no cell phone coverage. I have the Yaesu FTM-400XDR which give you a touchscreen keypad rather than having to use the one on the microphone. This makes sending messages much easier. I also use my cell phone and a Mobilinkd TNC connected to a mobile rig. This also makes it easy to send messages as you are using the touch screen on the phone.
I agree that for actual emergency communication I don't see a lot of value in APRS; Winlink is probably better suited for passing emergency traffic. There are a lot of hams in this area putting up Winlink infrastructure and practicing with the mode.
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KF5LJW

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Re: APRS Uses with EMCOMM
« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2021, 02:46:11 PM »

All hams are trying to figure out how to be of use again. Replaced long ago with technology.
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