[Today’s run: Watson road (3.5 miles) with wife and dog]
I checked out the http://aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/map# online VHF propagation map this morning and saw all sorts of yellow and red blobs on top of my area. So I fired up the FT-726R on 144.200 and made a few contacts. The farthest away was over in Georgia, north of Atlanta.
I believe the propagation map is based on APRS packet data. APRS is a packet radio system on the 2 meter band (144 mHz) which is used for a variety of things. Most people use it for location services; you can buy a “tracker” and hook it to a GPS and a radio. Those items work together to transmit a periodic position report using the GPS coordinates. There are various gateways of that radio data on to the internet. Besides the mobile systems there are also fixed-site digipeaters which act as packet relay stations.
So, I believe the mountainlake.k12 people are sorting through the APRS internet data stream and mapping out connections between points (probably the digipeaters), finding those longer than what is normally seen. It seems to work very well. When the local APRS nodes are seeing a wider range of neighbors then I should be able to get out farther on that band also.