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Adventures in LoRa APRS (70cms), After reading and watching the following:

RSGB RadCom (RSGB Membership Required)

• Understanding LoRa Part 1
• Understanding LoRa Part 2
• LoRa and APRS

SOTA Reflector

• LoRA APRS Tracker Part 1
• LoRA APRS Tracker Part 2
• LoRA APRS Tracker Part 3

YouTube Tech Minds

• LoRa APRS IGATE and Tracker

Now in Telford, Shropshire

I have my LoRa APRS IGATE up and running on 439.9125 MHz (BW125, SF12, CR5) and have received my first few packets

This is in addition to my existing 2m (144.800 MHz) FM Packet Radio (AX.25) IGATE station

I have also setup a syslog server on my raspberry PI (which is running my 2m FT8 station) so I can stream the received data and runtime activity of the embedded IGATE software, to a log file.

My M54 LoRa APRS Coverage

I was able to receive a mobile station across the full length of the M54 and have plotted the signal to noise values from west of Shrewsbury out to Essington nr Wolves, see below:

I continued to receive packets beyond Walsall albeit they were corrupted, due to incomplete reception.

I've done a bit more analysis of my LoRa APRS receiver as well as playing with various bandpass filters and pre-amps to try and improve the sensitivity of the receiver (albeit to no avail). My radio range seems to max out at around 45 miles in a very narrow direction (which is probably down to the relatively low sighting of my co-linear)

My latest data analysis is below and illustrates how the LoRa APRS radio decodes a few more packets overnight than in the daytime (I'm assuming that this is due to the local noise environment (floor) being reduced overnight and / or a reduction in transmissions within the 70cms band, also at this time)