By John WB2OSZ —

APRS Worst Practices

APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) is a powerful tool for amateur radio operators to share location, telemetry, weather, messages, Ham Radio Internet of Things, and other types of data. To ensure a negative experience for yourself and others on the APRS network, please follow these worst practices:

  • Transmit the location of stationary entities once a minute. Everyone is anxiously awaiting your next position report to find out if your house moved.
  • Design or configure your system to transmit without listening first or without using p-persistent CSMA. You are more important than everyone else and shouldn't have to wait your turn.
  • Remain ignorant. Don't read Understanding APRS Packets or other articles from How APRS Works. Ignorance is bliss.
  • When sending handcrafted packets, don't do anything to verify if they are valid.
  • Never update software applications. Who needs bug fixes from 20 or 30 years ago? If it was good enough for 1999, it's good enough for today.
  • Use very long digipeater paths to get the widest coverage. WIDE2-2,WIDE2-2,WIDE2-2,WIDE2-2,WIDE2-2,WIDE2-2,WIDE2-2 is good. People thousands of miles (or km) away really want to know about your station.
  • Don't help less experienced users. Letting them make mistakes and figure it out themselves will help build character. If they get frustrated and give up, we're better off without them.
  • Configure your IGate to transmit everything from APRS-IS that everyone already heard over RF. If your IGate isn't transmitting redundant information 5 times a minute, people might think it is broken.
  • Set FM deviation as wide as possible so people on adjacent channels and harmonics can hear you. After all, it's only polite to let the entire spectrum know know what you have to say.
  • Do not report defects in APRS devices and computer applications. Criticizing their creations might hurt the developers' feelings.
  • Do not give an APRS presentation to your local club. Everyone will think you are really smart of you don't share your knowledge.
  • If you have a web site, or give a presentation, use obsolete material from 20 or 30 years ago. We must respect history and protect our heritage.
  • If you write an APRS application, put APRS, CQ, or BEACON in the tocall/destination field. The maintainer of the device/system identifier list is very busy and doesn't want to be disturbed. If your device/application is behaving improperly, you don't want the problem to be traced back to you.
  • For more examples, see section 4 here.

Follow these guidelines and you will earn the esteemed title of LID.