Yesterday I helped my friend Karel, PE2KDK. Karel developed a game based on APRS. Basically you need 2 or more teams for this game. Every team has a team captain. The team itself is in the field and the team captain is at Basecamp. The position of the team is known in Basecamp because one person in the team wears a helmet with a handheld and a bluetooth GPS-mouse in it. In Basecamp we have a APRS-configuration consisting of a Kenwood TM-D700 with a Diamond X200N to pick up the APRS-signals of the handhelds. This is relayed thru a laptop running UIview so the teams are visible on aprs.fi.

In the ‘battlefield’ there are several command posts. These are populated with older scouts. The challenge for every team is to be the first at every command post. The team captain has to look at aprs.fi and talk his/her team to the command posts (every team has also a ‘voice’ hand held to stay in contact to their team captain on Basecamp).

The hard part is: every team can only talk for 2 minutes and then the other team captain gets to coach his/her team for 2 minutes. So effectively every team is ‘unguided’ for a few minutes before they can speak to their team captain again.

Of course this game is really nice for Scouting (for which it was created in the first place). The outdoor element, navigation, team effort, coaching, there are a lot of things you can learn of this game.Besides the bad weather it was a great day and the kids love “The Radio Game” as they call it!