On August 8, 2021, I conducted a practical test of the work of APRSdroid and BaoFeng UV-5R in Victory Park.

The transmission of GPS coordinates was initially carried out using Smart Beaconing, but I quickly figured out that a more suitable option for walking was sending coordinates using a timer, every 3 minutes. Why so often? The fact is that approximately 1/2 of the messages reach the APRS gateway.

The low location of the radio station affects it (I carried it in a pact, and the smartphone in my hand). The power at 144.800 MHz had to be increased to 5 W.

The volume when transmitting on the smartphone is at maximum, when receiving at the station - also the maximum volume (for an APRS cable purchased on AliExpress).

The largest number of neighboring APRS radio stations received over the air is four.

My real-time position was displayed on the website aprs.fi.

Benefits aPRSdroid + Baofeng UV-5R + cable kit: low price compared to d-Star (since the radio is analog) and compatible with the APRS standard.

Disadvantage: You cannot use the radio while a smartphone is connected to it. Since the radio uses VOX mode, do not disturb mode must be turned on on your smartphone.

Also, the experiment I conducted showed that you need to wear a second radio station in order to be able to conduct QSO, because APRS messages transmit the frequency for communication, in this case 145.500 MHz.

Map with track:

Related publications

Autonomous Trackers and Digi for the APRS system

APRS cables for Baofeng UV-5R: two options

APRS over TCP-IP

Using DireWolf with Xastir instead of soundmodem

Review of the APRS