APRS over internet (W2PE-5)

The club has our APRS gateway back up and running thanks to resources provided by Erie County.  The callsign you’ll see referenced is W2PE-5.  On APRS-IS, our ‘callsign’ is W2PE-JS.

What does this mean for users in Western New York (no RAWNY membership is required to utilize this server!)?  It means that if you are on APRS with a rig and TNC on RF, then your position and/or messages will be piped through to the internet (APRS-IS).  This data is compiled and displayed world wide on websites such as aprs.fi.  If you DO NOT have a dedicated 2 meter radio (144.39 FM simplex) to connect to the APRS network,  you can just load an APRS program, configure the APRS server and you can be monitoring APRS.

To utilize this service, if you are running a client application such as UI-View32, you can set up the internet server as this server.  Under the “Setup” menu, select “APRS Server Setup”.  Press the “Insert” button on the keyboard and enter aprs.w2pe.com and either 14582 or 10152 as the port.  Port 14852 will give your map stations that are only in the WNY / Southern Ontario area.  If you use port 10152, you’ll see stations within a 500km radius.  If you lookup APRS filtering on the internet, you’ll see ways to override the filter on port 14582 for your own use.  The filter on port 10152 cannot be changed per user.

When you use the settings above, when you connect, you will only receive stations, you will not send your call out on the APRS-IS (internet Server) network.  If you wish to beacon your address over this network, you need to authenticate your station.  This is done by filling in the box below the list of servers with the validation information.  You can Google how this is done and how the Validation Number (password) is calculated for your callsign.

To activate the connection to the server and hopefully see lots of APRS stations coming in to UI-View32, just select “Action” and “Connect to APRS Server” option.

If you’d like to send a message to another station, just type in their callsign and a short message and press “Send”!  Then sit back (or come back!) and see if you get a reply!  This works worldwide (we ARE hams after all!)

Good Luck!  Please let us know how it goes using the comment section below.

73, Jim, KA2IWK

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