One feature of many APRS-capable applications and radios is that they support specially-formatted APRS messages called queries or QRU. When the radio receives this message, the text “Q? ” will flash on the top of the screen. Here are the message you can send.
?APRSM – Re-queues any pending messages.
?APRSP – Triggers immediate position beacon – this appears to work even if beaconing is disabled.
?APRSS – Triggers a status packet (with whatever status text you have set – TH-D72: Menu 39, TM-D710: Menu 608)
?APRST – Returns the path over which the packet was heard.
Another observation: If you have multiple radios with multiple SSIDs (say KD8TWG-1 and KD8TWG-2), *both* radios will respond to a message sent to one or the other. I’m not sure if this is standard or if it’s a Kenwood thing.
Do you know of any other queries these radios respond to? If so, please leave a comment below!
For reference, here is where I found these commands: http://df8ls.de/documents/APRS-Queries.pdf
