APRS Fun from your Amateur Radio

Many of us have an Amateur radio that is either a mobile or an HT (Handheld) radio that has built-in APRS. Some of us may also have the Weather Channels pre-programmed into the radio or have a Memory Bank with them programmed. But have you ever thought about receiving Weather Reports through your radio by using APRS? Well, you can! It is not a full-featured weather report but it is worth checking out if you’re in a pinch. Follow me on this Journey.

First off set your APRS channel on your radio to 144.3900, now this could be the B Band on some radios, so please check your manual to see what band to enable your APRS. The last thing you want to do is beacon an APRS packet on a repeater channel.

Next, let’s look at two (2) beacons we can send through APRS for weather reports. The First is WXNOW. To send a request for local weather from a nearby weather station send a message (MSG) to WXNOW with N and the number of weather stations you want to respond to you (for example: n [space] 3) Because you want the 3 closest weather stations to provide you weather reports.

You should get an Acknowledgment (ACK), then a report will be delivered to your screen.

The next message for local weather reports is from a message sent to WXBOT. The procedure is a little different. This time we, are sending a beacon to WXBOT but we are requesting the weather for today, tomorrow, or our Zip code.