Issues with APRS and the Electric Vespa

Earlier this afternoon I put a 1/4 mobile antenna on the Electric Vespa, hooked up the Yaesu VX8gr and went out for a ride…  I was checking a couple of portable operating locations in my general neighborhood that I might be able to use in July and August.  The reason for that is because once school gets out my local parks are filled with Kids being kids…  It gets over crowded and I just don’t feel like sharing…  I have no real right to the parkland any more than they do and as there is more of them than there is of me I just figured on checking some other City Greenspaces that are not so structured. 

So far I have found nothing that meets my needs so I keep on looking…but…

I did notice that although the antenna is working fine, I am having a problem getting a signal into any of the IGATES in the south end of town.  As I followed my track this pm even though I was beaconing every 3 minutes I only got two into the APRS system.  One at the turn around point at 1834 and one at the end of the ride at 1850.  By my simple math we lost 5 beacons on the way back and about 7 beacons on the way there… 

 On the bright side of things I did get the Vespa up to 17kph on the way back…

So now I have two issues to look into.  The first is the quest for a quiet operating location and the second is trying to figure out how I am going to get a 5w aprs signal easily into a Digi…  I can bring up all the repeaters in town using 5w and the rubber resistor but…  it seems the closest Digi is a bit more of a challenge…

Wish me luck

73bob

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Tags: amateur radio, APRS, Electric Vespa, Yaesu VX8GR