APRS & LoRaAPRS iGate ON5MM-10
2m APRS, 70 cm APRS and 70 cm LoRaAPRS RX only IGate
There had been a bad APRS coverage of the eastern part of Belgium in the past: Due to the outstanding receiving capabilities at the telecom tower Mulleklenkes (DB0WA, HAMNET-URL) operating a APRS-RX at 144.8 MHz turned out to be nearly impossible. So the next APRS digi is at DB0SDA at the rooftop of the IHF Institute downtown Aachen. Being much lower in height, the reception to the west is dramatically reduced by the Aachen forest between Germany and the Netherlands and Belgium. This caused a bad coverage of the region around Kelmis, Raeren, Lontzen and Eupen while the next belgian APRS digi is next to Verviers or Liege. So I decided to raise up my own APRS RX IGate. It is based on three SDR sticks connected to a Diamond VHF/UHF Dualband antenna. A Raspberry Pi 4, which is also used for operating via QO100, runs the awesome dxlAPRS-toolchain which includes software decoders for all needed APRS modes.
The first stick is listening in the VHF ham radio band and receives 144.8 MHz (terrestrial APRS) and 145.525 MHz (APRS via ISS). The second stick listens to 432.5 MHz (terrestrial APRS 1k2 AFSK), the third one decodes LoRaAPRS on 433.775 MHz and 433.900 MHz. Under normal conditions, the surrounding area is well covered up to the neighbouring digis and beyond. The potpourri of multinational call signs mainly from truck drivers on the E40 few miles south is quite interesting. The following table shows the Last Heard list up to 7 days ago.
aprsc server
Feel free to connect to my aprsc server at aprs.on5mm.be (IPv6 only) or dx.on5mm.be (IPv6 or IPv4 connection). It listens to port 14580/tcp and is of course connected to APRS IS network. The webinterface can be found here.