And while the antenna is important, placement of the antenna is even more important! The the old mantra on placement is, “the higher the better” for the greatest reception. You don’t have to spend a fortune (even a Tram 1480 from Home Depot for $50 should be fine), but a good base antenna will make a world of difference. Noisy signals and weak signals will result in lost data.

While you may be able to operate a handie-talkie indoors, hitting local repeaters just fine, receiving signals from APRS stations is a whole new consideration. Perhaps the most important part of this puzzle is the antenna. Turns output of SDR# into a virtual playback device to be received by Direwolf Item Neededįor connecting the antenna to the computer I’ll first provide the parts list and then get into the details. But what if you don’t have a Raspberry PI laying around? What if you’re not a Linux geek? Well, this is your simple Windows-based solution. If you’ve been researching how to build an APRS iGate, surely you’ve seen quite a few articles on setting up a Raspberry PI or other Linux-based solution. All you need is a Baofeng connected with an audio cable to make that happen. Instead, in place of that, use a capable two-way ham radio. Don’t repeat the signals to the APRS-IS network beyond experimentation! If you wish to be a contributing station to the APRS-IS network, don’t use an RTL-SDR dongle. If you intend to leave your RX-only iGate online permanently, think again. Therefore, these instructions should be considered “an experiment only”. The common school of thought is that if a person happened to reply to a message that passed through YOUR iGate, and IF the APRS system as a whole decided your iGate was the proper iGate to send a reply back through, then that message would NOT reach the intended recipient due to the fact that your iGate is RX only. After posting this article, I received a lot of negative feedback about these instructions on how to build a RX (Receive Only) iGate.

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