APRS

APRS is cool stuff.  It stands for Automatic Packet Reporting System or Automatic Position Reporting System.  It uses GPS and amateur radio to show your location in near real time.  So what?  Imagine if Steve Fossett had APRS aboard is airplane when it disappeared.  If it did, we could have looked on the internet and seen his position, altitude, ground speed, etc and focused search efforts on a couple square miles instead of hundreds of miles.

What does it take?  You need a couple hundred dollars in readily available equipment, and an amateur radio license.  I will be getting my HAM license as soon as I can find a local HAM Cram (a weekend boot camp to prepare for the required written test), and will put on of these things in the new plane.  Until then, below is an example of what you can see.  This is a map showing Pete Howell’s RV-9A airplane with APRS equipment on board.  He is also the guy I bought my APRS antenna from that I will be putting in my RV-7 wing tip.  Once I get my plane on-line, I’ll use this page to track it.

UPDATE: May 1, 2010 – I just passed Tech exam!

Sam’s intro is another great reference for putting this together in your plane.

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The embedded map that use to appear here is not allowed at wordpress.com because it involves the use of javascript.

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I used this reference to embed this into my website.