N1ATP

2025 Roadtrip MA-KY-IL-IA-SD-WY-CO then SD-MA

DRAFT in PROGRESS – There may be updates during the trip

It is a long time since our last major road-trip and a ham-blog. This time we are using my wife’s sedan with no permanent antennas, glass roof and aluminum trunk lid. No mag-mounts will work!! The trip is planned from the last week in June to Mid July, 2025.

The Drive

2025 Route

Making Miles:

This is a lot of driving and our efficiency in somewhat planned. Over years of road trips we have found that Love’s Truck Stops has generously synchronized their locations to our driving habits (you think?). For decades we travelled with a dog and found that about 3.5 hours between stops is balanced for us. We use the Love’s truck-stop app and lay out fuel, food and comfort stops. It is all a plan we can easily follow. We plan 20 minutes at each stop and typically two to three stops per travel day. This plan will support us to Rapid City. From there will be a blend of local truck stops and Love’s. Can’t beat the convenience!

Additionally, we have our “mandatory” stop at the world largest truck stop IOWA80TruckStop.com

Stage 1:

  • MA to Cleveland, OH area for sleep,
  • 600 miles

Stage 2:

  • Cleveland, OH to Burlington, KY (Cincinnati Airport) to visit friends for a night
  • 250 miles
  • Estimated 850 miles running total

Stage 3:

  • Burlington, KY to Peoria, IL to visit friends for a night
  • 340 miles
  • Estimated 1200 miles running total

Stage 4:

  • Peoria, IL to Des Moines, IA
  • Stop at IOWA80TruckStop.com
  • 300 miles
  • Estimated 1500 miles running total

Stage 5:

  • Des Moines, OH to SD for wife’s family and alumni for a week.
  • 370 miles
  • Estimated 1900 miles running total

Stage 6:

  • SD to Steamboat Lake, CO
  • Must stop at WALL DRUG for Coffee and famous Caramel Rolls – read the fascinating story behind this great destination (or coffee stop).
  • Stop at 3 Sisters Truck Stop in Manville, WY. This stop is new for us, but the food ratings makes it mandatory.
  • Spend 3-5 days at Steamboat Lake.
  • 700 miles
  • Estimated 2600 miles running total

Stage 7:

  • CO to the Black Hills of SD to celebrate wife’s birthday in Deadwood. Wild Bill Hickok was shot in Saloon No 10 with a pair of aces and pair of 8’s (all black) in hand, now called “Dead Man’s Hand”.
  • Spend a few more days in SD.
  • 700 miles
  • Estimated 3300 miles running total

Stage 8:

  • Black Hills to Central SD
  • 300 miles
  • Estimated 3600 miles running total

Stage 9:

  • Starting 1600 miles journey back to the Berkshires……
  • SD to Des Moines
  • 370 Miles
  • Estimated 4000 miles running total

Stage 10:

  • Des Moines to Cleveland
  • 680 Miles
  • Estimated 4700 miles running total

Stage 11:

  • Finish the drive to the Berkshires
  • 600 miles’ish
  • Estimated 5300 miles running total

Ham Radio:

The use of mobile ham voice will be limited since my wife feels it is an unnecessary distraction in our car. Then again, in our numerous trips to the mid-west I have had dismal luck with simplex on the road. Traditionally, I have been monitoring 146.52 and 446.0 with no contacts east of the Missouri River.

Some years back I took a day trip from central SD to Mt Rushmore. Crossing the Missouri River I called out on 2m simplex and NC7R from my area in CT answered. He was on a road trip from CT to WY/MT area. This was totally uncoordinated (should probably have played the lotto that day?!), but what’s the chance to “meet” your ham neighbor from CT on I-90 in SD within 20 miles of each other?

APRS:

The car will have my PSE “Orange Box #2” in the back seat. This Harbor Freight suitcase has:

  • Automatic power selector – main car power and backup LifePo4 battery.
  • Onboard 16AHr LifePO4 battery. It will run the kit as an APRS-IS Tracker for 12+ hours.
  • Peplink BR1 LTE Router with both WiFi and Ethernet network.
  • WX3in1 APRS TNC by Ethernet.
  • Onboard IGate will be OFF so -14 will actually reflect area’s APRS coverage.
  • SharkRF Openspot1 DMR by Ethernet.

UPDATED – The car will beacon APRS two ways:

  1. LTE APRS-IS as N1ATP-1 to have solid coverage so our family can follow us real time, and
  2. UPDATED: The DR-135T has some problem making it intermittent. I don’t have the tools to investigate the problem, so a backup Byonics MT-RTG has been put in service as N1ATP-6. The combined picture is found on APRS.fi     After hours of troubleshooting and programming, the DR135 is up and running as both a 50w Tracker and roaming DIGI. See next update. as this trip’s “ham experiment” running an Alinco DR-135T at 26w with a marine Mushroom GPS Antenna as APRS with a 2m no-ground trunk lip-mount antenna as N1ATP-14
  3. UPDATED: The fam decided to switch cars on the SD-CO-SD leg from our sedan to an extended cab pickup truck?!! More room, but the APRS project is changing –
    1. The 50w DR135 I have tuned for days remain behind and I am back to a Byonics MT-RTG at 10 watts as N1ATP-6. The 10w beacon worked flawlessly along I-90 West of the Missouri River across WY and CO. The return took us back through Wyoming up route 85 to Deadwood, SD. The Black Hills is mountainous and the coverage was poor.
    2. N1ATP-1 will also remain behind in SD.
    3. N1ATP-11, the new IGateMini will come along and become the IGate at Steamboat Lake, CO.
    4. N1ATP-7 IGate is a Byonics MT-AIO is a AA Battery self contained APRS Tracker if we go hiking or need to track a 2nd family vehicle.
  4. N1ATP-11 is a new IGateMini in the toolkit that is planned to be used in fixed locations as we spend night(s) along the way. It has provided an IGate at every stop for us.- SD,CO, Black Hills,SD and back to our central SD home plate. All destinations with little of no local APRS coverage. On the way home it will be our IGate while overnighting with friends and hotel.

The expectation is for spotty APRS RF digi coverage East of the Missouri River and improved coverage as we get further West past the Black Hills of South Dakota. You can watch a combined APRS map of Cell and RF based APRS Map.

TRAVEL HOME

Travel home starts 7/11 with another attempt with the DR-135 as -14 and the trusty -1 event box by LTE.

Other than the system unintentionally getting disconnected from power, they both performed as expected;

  • The LTE Box was flawless (although dependent and cell service), and
  • the DR-135 worked well, however inconsistent since rural areas east of the Missouri River had holes in the coverage making it not reliable for continuous monitoring.
  • Kudos to the guys west of the Missouri River for an amazing network of DIGIs creating a nearly flawless system all the way to Steamboat Springs, CO!

GPS SYNC PROBLEMS

While at Steamboat Lake, CO we decided to go hiking with the MT-AIO as a tracker. It did not receive GPS sync in 30 minutes so the AT-878 was deployed and also did not get GPS sync. Thus no APRS while on the hike. I could not determine why we could not get GPS sync on these two units.

NEW APRS PROJECT

A new IGateMini is a supercool 1w or LTE Tracker, Digi and IGate. Whenever we are stationary for a few days we will create a local IGate for our other APRS Trackers.

APRS CONCLUSION

APRS is such a cool technology. Variations are used in marine and aviation to create the ability to monitor and situational awareness. The DIGI networks have shrunk over the years as the first generation APRS Geeks (that’s me included!) have cycled out. We need to regrow the network. With all the inexpensive APRS capable Chineese radios, we have the tracker capabilities. Now time to rebuild the DIGI and IGATE networks.

As a PSE coordinator one needs to have a cache of of both trackers AND Digi/Igate Networks making it a little more cash intensive. It is still a tool that makes any event more efficient.

DMR:

Orange Box #2 has a DMR Hot Spot normally on Brandmeister TG 31252 (Berkshires). Depending on how crowded we are in the car, I may have a HT monitoring this.

The primary hotspot is a SharkRF Openspot 1.

I will also have an Openspot 4 Pro with me for occasional portable use.

The Radios

DMR doesn’t work without a radio (maybe time to think about a SharkRF M1KE?) so I’ll have to bring a few:

  1. Anyone AT-878 (plus letters). This is my go-to ham HT for Analog and DMR.
  2. Alinco DR-135 for 2m voice to be mounted on Orange 2 Box.
  3. Misc Motorola MotoTrbo HT’s. These are the go-to for fam-comm (yes, nationwide biz-license and GMRS) and DMR Ham by Hotspot.
  4. Toughbook for programming.

Internet

Other than cellphones, we have a portable “ATT internet at home” service with both ethernet and WiFi and unlimited data. This is the simple on the go network box for networking including APRS and AREDN.

On the Go Blogging

I am not good at this at all. There may be a blog addition here and there?? Check out the right side-bar.