29-NOV-02 - (The Day After Thanksgiving) - 

Peter is back at W4ERL's QTH for a brief rest after over 18,000 miles. He picked up a leased Kenworth and will be in it until he gets a new "Big Truck" (Probably 6 months). Not likely to appear on hf 'till then, though he may go VHF in the leased rig. He went to Asheville, NC in hopes of getting more memory for his laptop, and wound up getting a new computer (Gateway Solo 1450). We hoped the new computer with faster CPU, greater RAM and new OpSys (1.3 Celeron(R), 256KRAM, and WinXP(R)) would fix the problems he has been experiencing with the old system and Sprint's "AirCard"  a Novatel C201 (I think - de JOe). Well... Murphy is still alive. We had more problems initially with the new PC than the old. First problem: the system had COM3 initialized - fixed easily. Second problem: half the time when booted the XP OpSys saw the Magellan GPS as a "OS2 Serial Mouse" and the output from the GPS would cause the cursor to go all over the screen and select all kinds of unwanted things. This was resolved thanks to Lou Ruh - WX3I who suggested that we "Disable" (not remove) the entry in the System/Devices. That proved to be the answer. We still don't know what the answer for compatibility between the AirCard Access to the internet and APRSA will be. Seems as though the AirCard and IE (Internet Explorer) is fine, but there is a problem with it and APRSA. APRSA looks like it may be sending, but no data is received. (This same setup worked intermittently on the old laptop). It is hard to do much about this here at the home QTH, since there is no Sprint coverage. I think the closest is in Waynesville, NC about a 45 minute drive. I suspect Peter may try Win APRS if he has time just to see if that will work.

Peter is due to return to the road this afternoon and I expect he will provide updates via e-mail and such until the AirCard issues are resolved. (de JOe W4ERL)