Beaconing
This is the reference for everything beaconing in APRS Connect. If you have never sent a beacon, start with the tutorial — Your first beacon — and come back here when you want to tune it.
More than one beacon
Beacons live on the Radio screen (under More), in the Beacons section. The station beacon — the one that transmits as your callsign and SSID — is always there and cannot be deleted, only switched off. Beyond it you can add any number of independent beacons, each with its own symbol, comment, path, rate, and routing:
- Extra position beacons, including ones that transmit as a different callsign — a club call, a second SSID.
- Object beacons, which announce a thing rather than a station: an aid station, a net control point, an event. Long-press the map to place one at an exact point.
If two enabled beacons would transmit as the same station or object, the editor warns you that only one of them will go on the air.
Smart beaconing or a fixed interval
Two chips choose the timing: SMART or FIXED INTERVAL.
Smart beaconing is the default. The interval scales with speed — by default, 90 seconds at highway speed stretching to 30 minutes parked — and corner pegging sends an extra beacon on real heading changes while ignoring compass jitter when you are stationary. Every parameter is editable:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fast rate (moving), seconds | The interval at or above high speed |
| Slow rate (parked), seconds | The interval when parked |
| High speed (fast rate applies), knots | Above this, the fast rate applies |
| Low speed (counts as parked), knots | Below this, you count as parked |
| Minimum turn angle, degrees | How sharp a turn triggers a corner-peg beacon |
| Turn slope | Scales the turn threshold with speed |
| Minimum seconds between turn beacons | Keeps a winding road from flooding the channel |
A fixed interval suits a station that does not move: 1, 5, 10, or 30 minutes, or any custom value in seconds.
GPS or a fixed location
In the Position section, GPS follows the phone; FIXED LOCATION reports one point that never changes. For a fixed location, type coordinates, tap USE CURRENT LOCATION to take the phone's fix once, or long-press the map. Include speed and direction adds course/speed to the packet while moving — it only applies to GPS beacons, since a fixed location has neither.
Position ambiguity
The Location privacy section sets position ambiguity per beacon: five levels, from EXACT (about 60 ft, the finest an APRS position can carry) down to a cell roughly 70 miles across. The digits are genuinely removed before the packet is built, so the packet names a cell rather than a point — the standard APRS ambiguity mechanism every other client understands. Reduced precision is flagged in the beacon's summary so it cannot stay on by accident.
Stale GPS positions
When the GPS fix goes stale, what happens depends on how you were last seen. A station last seen stopped keeps beaconing its position — a parked car is still where it parked. A station last seen moving goes silent rather than re-sending a place it has left.
Symbol
Tap the symbol to open the picker: the full APRS symbol set, around 190 symbols including overlays, searchable by name — type "4x4" and get the jeep — and grouped by category (Vehicles, People, Weather, Places, and so on). This is how your station appears on every APRS map.
Voice frequency and PHG
The On the air section can advertise a voice frequency, with tone and offset. It goes first
in the comment in the standard spec format, so radios like a Kenwood TH-D75 can tune straight
to it from the packet — with a live preview of exactly what goes on air. A PHG field (four
digits, e.g. 5132) decodes itself into watts, height, and antenna as you type.
Mic-E or standard format
The Packet format section chooses per beacon between STANDARD and MIC-E, with the trade-offs stated on the switch itself. Standard is readable on the wire: the position is plain text in the raw packet log, which is the first place to look when a beacon is not being heard. Mic-E is about half the bytes — which matters on a busy 1200-baud channel — and the only format that carries a one-word status code (Off Duty, En Route, In Service, and so on) that other radios display beside your callsign. The trade: the raw log shows machine bytes instead of readable coordinates, and PHG does not fit.
Every beacon reports its own status
Each beacon's row on the Radio screen says how many have been sent and how long ago — or the exact problem keeping it off the air, like waiting for a GPS fix or a denied location permission. Beaconing continues in the background once background running is on, and a fresh install transmits nothing until you turn beaconing on.
Answering ?APRSP position queries
Other stations can ask where you are with an on-air ?APRSP query. Answering is opt-in and
off by default — no query can make your station transmit unless you have turned answering
on. The switch lives under
Settings → Privacy → Position queries (and on the Beaconing screen as Answer position
queries). Turned on, an asking station gets one ordinary beacon in reply — position blur
included — rate-limited per asker, and the screen logs every query heard and what became of
it: answered, ignored, or rate limited.
Related guides
- Your first beacon — the step-by-step tutorial.
- Map — how your beacon, and everyone else's, is drawn.
- Connect a radio — put your beacons on RF.
Last updated 31 August 2026