Users of these facilities should be encouraged to support them. Unlike other monitoring programs which are totally passive, the DX cluster sysop can use APRS to monitor the channel and see what APRS users are out there. Since APRS was designed to monitor a packet channel and to capture selected packets for display, it is an ideal tool for the DX enthusiast. The efficiency improvement of APRS is due to the elimination of the need for a separate transmission and ACK from every DX cluster user for every spot report. If there are 20 users logged on to a DX cluster, then under ideal conditions with NO collisions, then there are a minimum of 40 packets involved.
All APRS functions continue to operate in the usual manner, but with the following exceptions.
The ALL BCNS list will still get saved to the LOGS directory everytime the list gets greater than 50 entries. APRS will attempt to parse a grid square out of the DX spot comment field. If the grid square is absent or in the wrong format, APRS will use a table lookup of the callsign prefix to find the location of the station. So far, APRS does not parse 6 digit squares while in the DX mode. In order for APRS to keep up with the deluge of packets from a DX cluster, it is running wide-open with minimum filters and context checking.