Washington Digital Radio Enthusiasts

The Washington Digital Radio Enthusiasts Amateur Radio Club maintains APRS digipeaters and one or more bi-directional I-gates.

Terestrial APRS Digipeater:
This facility listens on the North American standard APRS frequency (144.390 Mhz) for 1200 baud packet radio digital data formatted for use with the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS)

The system includes a powerful digipeater placed high on a mountaintop overlooking the Spokane area, and another fill-in digipeater with a bi-directional I-gate that makes for a complete APRS system using no more than two hops. Other fill-in digipeaters, operated by other parties, may also repeat or gate beacons or messages in the local area.

International Space Station APRS Digipeater:

This system is owned and operated by Glen-K1RR. It is physically located at his home QTH in West Spokane. During times of suitable APRS communication with the ISS in our area, Glen switches the dipeater to digipeat and gate APRS packets from the ISS.
At other times, Glen switches the digipeater for use as a terestrial APRS digipeater and I-gate.

Digipeated packets containing beacons and messages are reported to the Internet based global APRS-IS network so anyone in the world can see the information. Also, any packets from the global APRS-IS network, destined for stations nearby, will be transmitted by the appropriate WA7DRE APRS I-gate transceiver, and repeated by the WA7DRE-11 mountaintop digipeater. If the destination station cannot receive the packets directly, other nearby digipeaters may echo the packets to help ensure the packets are received.

A good place to find, and monitor, stations reporting to the APRS-IS network: http://aprs.fi/ or http://aprsdirect.com

To learn more about the entire APRS system: http://aprs.org/

The WA7DRE APRS Digipeater and I-gate system is composed of the following hardware and software:

WA7DRE-11 Digipeater (no I-gate):

Location: Summit of Mica Peak near Spokane Valley, WA
Antenna: 5/8 wave, two meter antenna placed above the roof
Transceiver: Icom V-8000, TX at full power, 75 W
TNC Device and digipeater: Byonics TinyTrak4

WA7DRE Digipeater and bi-directional I-gate:

Location: Near Cheney, WA
Antenna: Comet GP-9 colinear antenna mounted 70' up in a tree
Transceiver: Motorola Maxtrac 300 transceiver, TX at full power, 45 W
Digipeater and Gateway Device: Microsat WX3in1 Plus 2.0 with broadband Internet connecton

WA7DRE-10 Digipeater and bi-directional I-gate:

Location: Home QTH of Glen-K1RR, West Spokane, WA
Antenna: 5/8 wave, two meter antenna placed above the roof
Transceiver: Icom V-8000, TX at full power, 75 W
TNC Device and digipeater: Microsat WX3in1 Plus 2.0 with broadband Internet connecton
Sometimes configured for communication with the ISS digipeater.
If map symbol is a Satelite dish, the Digipeater is configureed for APRS through the ISS (freq=145.825 mhz, Path=R0ISS).
If map symbol is a House, then the digipeater is configured for normal terestrial use (freq=144.390 mhz, Path=WIDE2, etc.).

For more information about this Digipeater and I-gate system, or to report a problem, please contact:
Randy Wilkinson - W4LKS
email: w 4 l k s (at) h v a c w a r e . n e t
phone: 509-993-7739