VHF

There are several primary VHF IGates in Queensland, these stations are considered to be the centre of the present five island APRS digipeater networks.  In normal situations the transmissions from any of these gates should not bleed over into neighboring networks.  The five networks are generally, South East Qld, Wide Bay/Fraser Coast, Central Qld, North Qld and Far North Qld. 

The challenge for Vk4 APRS is the size of the state, and balancing the amount of reverse gated traffic.  All Vk4 IGates will reverse gate vk4 originated beacons and objects, so state-wide object viewing should be possible.

There are other RX only IGates within these systems that were intended to help gate traffic to the IS, it should be noted that if the primary and a RX gate sends the same packet to the IS it is considered one message if gated within a few seconds, ostensibly having multiple RX gates within the system should not cause duplicate packets.  

• VK4OG-1 at Mt Mee takes care of SEQ
• VK4UN-1 at Tewantin - secondary SEQ
• VK4HPW-1 - Southern Darling Downs
  
• VK4ADR - Bundaberg
• VK4TW - Gladstone
• VK4BY - Rockhampton
• VK4RM in Sarina for CQ
• Far North Queensland, welcome back Art (VK4GO), who is working on an APRS system for FNQ

The digipeater system in the Central Highlands and Capricorn Coast regions is very extensive, helped by a linked voice repeater system.  Mobiles pretty much have blanket coverage for most of the region located roughly from Gladstone up to Rockhampton and west almost to Emerald, covering Blackwater, Dysart.  Mackay, Sarina and districts are well serviced by local digis and by a well located digi at Nebo.

Please contact Mark Robinson or Peter Schrader if you plan to put up a WIDE or RELAY digipeater.  Please do not enable gating to RF or gating RF to Internet unless you have contacted one of the above people.  Contact details are in the Contact section of this website.

For more extensive coverage the operator will need to use the HF APRS frequency.

HF

There are three HF Gates in Qld, VK4RM-4, VK4UN-4 and VK4DMI-4.  All three gates are receiving HF APRS beacons and gating directly to the IS.  The objective is rather than have the HF Gate send the beacon out via VHF as before, the regional primary IGate will achieve this instead, reducing the number of packets on VHF.  HF Mobiles in Queensland will not necessarily be gated by a VK4 HF gate due to the skip nature of 30 metres.  Ensure your beacon rate and paths are set according to the national standards.

UHF

Presently there is one IGate located in Northgate (inner North-East Brisbane) RX and TX on 439.100.  No plans for UHF digipeaters at this time unless there is a perceived need.  This IGate gates beacons and objects from all of VK and ZL, W6EL weather and earthquakes and a DX Cluster feed from Europe.  Mobiles will not be gated reliably using this service due to the high data rate, hence is it envisiged that this service is only useful for home or portable stations.  A discussion will be had shortly about upgrading this IGate to 9600, and building a number of 9600 capable digipeaters, this will depend on demand.

Satgates

Occassionally some operators will setup their home stations to gate satellite based APRS traffice, a 24/7 based operation of a Satgate in each region is encouraged.