APRS experiment: OpenTracker + Kenwood TH-D7A

August 30, 2010 | Amateur Radio | By: Mark VandeWettering

On Saturday, I decided that the missus and I needed to do two things: get out of the house and get some exercise, and test my OpenTracker. So, I thought that we’d drive out to Mount Diablo, get a hike around, and then see how well the combination of my TH-D7A and the OpenTracker worked. For added difficulty, I set the TH-D7A to use the “EL” power setting, which is a very minimal 50mw, fed to the mag mount whip on the top of my Expedition.

Here’s the path it recorded:

OpenTracker, Kenwood TH-D7a at 50mw

It worked pretty well, which bodes well for the balloon launch. It suggests that power levels of a couple hundred mw would be entirely adequate for balloon launches.

Comments

Comment from Myles VK6ZRY
Time 2/5/2012 at 12:35 am

my simple HTC phone has GPS it will use the Latitude App to plot where I am on a map for all to see.