Hello  gopher enthusiasts  and passers-by.  It's September,  which
means it is ROOPHLOCH [1] season! Unfortunately the month flew by,
as it always seems to. Guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore.

Regardless, this is  a pretty low key entry. I'll  expand a little
more on the actual entry [2],  which again used the APRS to gopher
tailphlogger bashed together in Python. After slacking all year, I
finally got around to  sending message acknowledgements which will
stop the APRS client from  retrying upon receipt. Although I don't
have  any  client  that  sends a  message  without  requesting  an
acknowledgement, which would  be nice to test so  the program will
only send an ack when requested. Anyways, I will clean up the code
from all  the flotsam from testing  and debugging and will  put it
somewhere in case anyone else wants to poke at it.

For the attempt itself, I tried sending a couple line entry via an
HT strapped  to my bag during  an off road motorcycle  trip, but I
was either too far  in the hole or too low power to  be heard by a
digipeater to  send it along.  The other attempt at  low elevation
and highway speeds also did not  bear fruit. I probably could have
climbed  the hill  and  stood  still long  enough  to  get a  good
transmission, but I really wanted to test it in everyday and often
suboptimal conditions.

A test  via the cell  network did  show that the  tailphlogger was
still operational, so  on the next attempt that is  what I decided
to use.  I suppose the  adage "two is one  and one is  none" holds
water in this case. I will perform  more tests with the HT and see
how I can make it work  more reliably. The topology of digipeaters
have changed so I guess I'll just  have to map out where I can get
good signal to communicate once more.

In the end, I still find it  fun to play with the APRS system, and
making these fun little widgets improve the utility of the network
for me. Keeping the spirit alive for WB4APR (SK).