SN Spotter Network: APRS—>SN Unstable Again

[Mike Heskett]

Ben, I guess you missed the part where I said the APRS Placefile that works is only for the registered spotters in one of our 46 counties.
You asked why I would want to receive reports from a chaser. Why would Spotter Network add fields in a person's Contact Information specifically for use by NWS and Emergency Management? Simple, so they could be contacted to get a better picture of what they are seeing. There have been times when NWS Forecasters have wanted more information about what someone close to a feature is seeing to aid in the decision making process of whether to warn or not warn on a particular cell. Yes, it is great to receive reports of severe or tornadic activity once it occurs, but there is a lot of thought process that goes into the warning decision making process. Information from people with eyes on that cell can help that process. How do we know who is near? The little position blips on the radar display from Spotter Network. You may never understand why that is important, but that is one of the ways that we use the position data inside of one NWS office. Disclaimer: I am not talking on behalf of any NWS office or personnel - just our team working the radio desk across the desk from some really smart NWS personnel.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Well I was just going off your hypothetical of only amateur radio getting through (which is really not the case anymore, back to my original point) which means you can't report and the NWS cannot get ahold of you anyway. If you have cell service, you can update your SN beacon and receive a phone call from the NWS. I still don't understand the argument other than it's cool and I agree - would be nice if it worked. Obviously it isn't stable. I don't have any insight into why that is, but posting incessantly about it being down and throwing a tantrum in here seems counter intuitive as well.

I like APRS and ham radio as much as you guys, and have been running aprs on my kenwood d710 for over a decade, but even I can realize the usefulness of it has really gone downhill. I'm glad yall have something that works in FWD's CWA, but I've dropped plenty of SN reports around that CWA in my years of chasing(Looks like 18 according to the SN reports csv). Graduate to 2019. Everyone has a smart phone and anyone out there should have radarscope at this point at the very least.

 

[Peter Potvin]

I would like to add a comment to this discussion, if you all don't mind.

In some areas, there may not be cellular service in order to use the RS --> SN reporting feature, but there is a digipeater. That is where the APRS !SN! reporting comes into play. If there's no cellular service but there is a digipeater, the APRS feature will should still work (under optimal conditions). If there is no digipeater but there is cellular service, then I see no problem using the RS --> SN reporting feature instead. Sometimes, it's just a case of one or the other, or none at all, that depends on service availability.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Yeah, I get that. It updates your location on the map, but the NWS still has no way to get ahold of you if you are out of cellular range. You can still make a voice report. That's all I'm saying, is that the fringe cases of no cellular, it can be useful, but I'm not sure it's really something to get worked up over and post incessantly about. It either works or it doesn't, but dumping resources into fixing it permanently seems like a waste. That's been my whole point.

 

[Ryan Dobbie]

With cellular networks working as well as they do nowadays, is there really a reason to use APRS to update your SN icon anymore? I'm just curious what the reasoning is behind it in 2019. The only thing you can do with it is update a position, with multiple hops that hopefully get to the internet.

I was out on Saturday and my cell didn't update a darn thing to APRS/SN … I was trying to meet up with a fellow chaser in the area as we had some very serious activity and wanted to gather data before getting swamped but couldn't, we also kept having to hang up on the phone from talking to focus on repositioning .... very not cool for SN

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Interesting, I don't see any reports from you on Saturday. Did you try reporting? If you had some very serious activity, I would assume there was something to report. And how would have APRS specifically helped in this situation? You obviously had cellular connectivity, couldn't you just say 'meet me here'?

 

[John Wetter]

Mark, can you provide your APRS string for the same time period as when you were not on SN?

As I’ve previously mentioned, it’s difficult to support APRS for us as none of us use it. We may discontinue support in the future for this reason

 

[Mark Drees]

Hey @John Wetter, I am currently transmitting on APRS now. Here's a history look up as well ...
Google Maps APRS. Sorry for the delay as I have been offline.

 

[J Weeks]

So I take it that SN is not going to put any effort into fixing the !SN! issue on APRS? This continues to be an issue. It worked fine when Ryan at AH was supporting it. Has anyone reached out to him from SN to try to troubleshoot why something that worked for years has stopped working? This is a very important feature and when it work, it is the most seamless way to report positions. Its a shame that SN feels since its something they can't make work that they're just going to throw their hands in the air and move forward not supporting it. For me, it was the primary reason to use SN.org. Without this feature, there is no reason to use SN as NWSChat is a better place to post storm reports for our group. It has been a main operational feature to be able to see the APRS positions in GRLevelX software. I guess we'll just use aprs.fi and NWSChat and move on. SN seems uninterested in supporting us.

 

[John Wetter]

So I take it that SN is not going to put any effort into fixing the !SN! issue on APRS? This continues to be an issue. It worked fine when Ryan at AH was supporting it. Has anyone reached out to him from SN to try to troubleshoot why something that worked for years has stopped working? This is a very important feature and when it work, it is the most seamless way to report positions. Its a shame that SN feels since its something they can't make work that they're just going to throw their hands in the air and move forward not supporting it. For me, it was the primary reason to use SN.org. Without this feature, there is no reason to use SN as NWSChat is a better place to post storm reports for our group. It has been a main operational feature to be able to see the APRS positions in GRLevelX software. I guess we'll just use aprs.fi and NWSChat and move on. SN seems uninterested in supporting us.

Hi J,
We've spent a ton of time on this but can't see what is the issue. Ryan is still supporting it as he has for some time, we've thought we've squashed this bug several times but apparently not.

 

[Mike Heskett]

It is working at 820 PM Wed 12/4. I haven't looked in a while.

 

[Mark Drees]

Not working on my end.

 

[Mike Heskett]

No, it is not working now. Mark, you were showing last night when I posted that it was working.

 

[Mark Drees]

No, it is not working now. Mark, you were showing last night when I posted that it was working.

At least it worked for a day this time.

 

[J Weeks]

I learned something interesting this morning that may shed some light on the problem. APRS had been working flawless for me for several days. This morning I fired up Radarscope on my phone, which I hadn't used for a while. I had Radarscope configured to also give my position info to SN. I have since disabled it. However after Radarscope reported my location info to SN, the APRS !SN! position info stopped working. In my case, it looks like Radarscope may be a culprit. Interesting observation anyway.