> I understand that Xastir uses a connected Garmin Rino to get
> position fixes of other Rinos in the area.
>
> you say
> > plot them on the local screen, and create APRS objects which it
> > transmits out to APRS stations.
>
> I assuming this secondary transmission occurs over HAM and would
> require connecting a second radio in the field to transmit positions
> for public APRS tracking on the web.
Yes. In this configuration you'd probably have one of the cheaper RINO's attached to a pole at base with a longish serial cable connecting to an Xastir box inside. You'd then have a 2-meter radio attached to an antenna and TNC, with the TNC attached to Xastir, but the TNC portion in this case can be software-based (like "soundmodem" for Linux or "AGWPE" for Windows).
> Am I correct or is there a more efficent way of doing this in the
> field other than connecting directly via the internet?
There shouldn't be any internet involved. Just two radios, a TNC, an antenna for the 2-meter (the RINO already has an attached antenna), and a PC or Mac running Xastir.
> Do you have any recommendations on configurations of HAM with Rino
> connections talking to Xastir?
I don't recall whether anyone has gotten GPSMan to work under Windows yet. They might have though. The general configuration I'd recommend would be a Linux box running Xastir, with a hardware TNC attached to the 2-meter.
Any more discussion on this should probably be done over on the Xastir list, as this is probably getting too detailed & specific to be of much use to the general list here.
I don't know what the range is on those RINO's either. If you're running under FRS they don't go far. If you're using GMRS, I'm not sure whether the positioning data goes out at the high-power level with those, it might still be at the low-power FRS transmit level.
So... They might not be of general interest to SAR if you can't get much range out of them.
--
Curt, WE7U. APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
--- In SAR_APRS@yahoogroups.com, "Curt, WE7U"
> I don't recall whether anyone has gotten GPSMan to work under
> Windows yet. They might have though. The general configuration I'd
> recommend would be a Linux box running Xastir, with a hardware TNC
> attached to the 2-meter.
I think the main problem with GPSMan/Xastir on windows was related to he "gpsmanshp" plug-in that allows xastir to download shapefile maps from GPS tracks. This is a shared library that GPSMan uses, and that doesn't play well with Windows.
GPSMan itself is just a TCL/Tk program, and should work fine without the gpsmanshp plugin on Windows/Cygwin. That's all that is needed for the RINO interface, as in this case xastir just reads the .gpstrans file that gpsman produces directly.
You're right, though, that further discussion of that probably belongs on the Xastir list instead.
--
Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
