Ham log #3 - APRS location services on Baofeng

Ki7QFV locating via APRS on my Baofeng UV-5R

APRS is a location service for hams.  Many see it as a great mechanism for tracking mobile stations, and on some radios, APRS can actually alert you when another APRS enabled ham is nearby, and even tell you which frequency they are on.

In my case, I wanted to make APRS work on my little Baofeng radio for transmitting my location.  I found an app online for my iphone called PocketPacket.  It has the ability to share my APRS geo-location information both by cell, and by radio.  It requires a special cable (BTECH APRS-K1 Audio Interface Cable) that looks like this: 

This cable, plugged into my iphone's headphone jack allowed me to configure the pocketpacket for "audio modem" mode.  After I configured all my personal settings/callsign information, I matched the radio to frequency 144.39, and connected!

You have to be careful with the app though - to really know you've made a radio connection you want to watch the packet log for the interface you're using. You should see the packet flow under the "audio modem" section.

By default the application wants to use the cell network to update your location information.  You'll need to intentionally disable the internet/IS connection, & *enable* the audio modem.  Then connect the cable, and set your radio to 144.39,  you should be good to go!

You also need to turn the VOX trigger down as far as you can, to prevent your updates from taking over the channel for longer than necessary.  Start with 100 if you can.  Once you have this fine tuned you should see your geo-location update if you check the web here:
https://aprs.fi

If things go well, you should see the default icon (a house) on the map in your location, but you can change that icon to reflect your aprs function (vehicle, etc).

My next step will be to get a more intelligent radio that has built in APRS so I can leverage more of the advanced features of this tool, but this has been a fun first step!