The mobile APRS W2 digi left town this morning

APRS is characterised by a lack of standards or guidance, but mostly by a lack of compliance with those standards and a lack of understanding and common sense.

VK2UWP is travelling around the countryside and from the look of it, setting up a WIDE2 digipeater in the local caravan parks without regard to its dysfunction.

VK2UWP-2 is a Kenwood DM-710 configured to repeat packets on their third hop, though it announces itself in its beacons as a “Portable Fill In Digi“.

This is a town (Mittagong) with two W2 digis on prominent hills less than 20km distant… already a congestion problem exists with insane duplication of traffic.

An example packet showing the third hop:
> 20140731 03:48:13.030  IGATE VK2OMD-3
VK2YCJ-9>S2T9R1,VK2RTZ-1,VK2AMW-1,VK2UWP-2*,qAR,VK2OMD-3:`ODvosA>/FoxTrak

Note that this packet had already been iGated in this area having been heard from VK2AMW, and there would be at least six iGates that would have heard the packet already.

Not only does it repeat packets on their nth hop for negligible utility, but he delays the packets and injects them to APRS-IS corrupted due to the delay:
2014-08-30 09:02:17 EST: VK2YCJ-9>S2S9U8,VK2RTZ-1*,WIDE2-2,qAR,VK2RTG-5:`OGEnR%>/FoxTrak
2014-08-30 09:13:17 EST: VK2YCJ-9>S2S5S3,VK2RTZ-1*,WIDE2-2,qAR,VK2ZEN-5:`OJLn>j>/
2014-08-30 09:14:32 EST: VK2YCJ-9>S2S4Y5,VK2RTZ-1*,WIDE2-2,qAR,VK2RTG-5:`OJYniM>/
2014-08-30 09:14:50 EST: VK2YCJ-9>S2S4X2,VK2RTZ-1*,WIDE2-2,qAR,VK2RTG-5:`OJQo7#>/FoxTrak
2014-08-30 09:23:30 EST: VK2YCJ-9>S2S9U8,VK2RTZ-1,VK2AMW-1,VK2UWP-2*,qAR,VK2HIM-1:`OGEnR%>/FoxTrak [Duplicate position packet]

This group shows the first posit delayed by over 20min by VK2UWP-2 (I have observed up to 30min delay).

Screenshot - 03_09_2014 , 07_12_46You might wonder how the above happens where the packet path is via VK2OMD-3, VK2UWP-2*,qar,VK2OMD-3, wouldn't duplication detection drop the packet since it has already transited VK2OMD-3. Again, the detail records show what has happened.

2014-08-31 15:24:52 EST: VK2OMD-9>APOTU0,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,VK2OMD-3:/052449h3429.91S/15027.12E>317/000!W73!/A=002280HDOP01.1 SATS08
2014-08-31 15:56:00 EST: VK2OMD-9>APOTU0,VK2AMW-1,VK2UWP-2*,qAR,VK2OMD-3:/052449h3429.91S/15027.12E>317/000!W73!/A=002280HDOP01.1 SATS08  [Delayed or out-of-order packet (timestamp)]

The first record is for the original VK2OMD-9 packet generated at 052449UTC (see the timestamp within the posit), and the second record is VK2UWP-2 repeating that packet more than half an hour later and it evades duplicate detection because of that latency. aprs.fi flags the record as having a problem ONLY because VK2OMD-9 has transmitted a timestamp within the posit.

Not content to make this kind of chaos, VK2UWP-1 (also a Kenwood DM710)  is concurrently doing the same thing 250km north at his home location. Note that these problems might not be endemic to Kenwoods. but they do seem to figure a lot in mention of disruptive digipeaters.

This is the epitome of ARPS problems, go figure!