Have you ever heard a callsign and said "Gee, I wonder who that is?" Well,
now you can find out. There are multiple methods of finding out who a
callsign is. The two methods discussed here rely on the
QRZ.com web site lookup.
The easiest method is to send an APRS numbered message to WHO-IS with the callsign as the only
text in the message. This returns a one line message with the information
you are looking for. If you want full information, add "f " before the
call to get a multi-line response.
Message text is case-insensitive. Examples of both commands (message number sequence {xxxxx is removed):
AE5PL-10>APRS::WHO-IS :ae5pl
AE5PL-10>APRS::WHO-IS :f ae5pl
WHO-IS is a javAPRSSrvr client written in Java and uses XML to access
the qrz.com database. You can also use WHO-15 (fifteen) to
accommodate those clients and IGates that do not support non-AX.25 SSIDs. Both servers
perform exactly the same and may be used interchangeably.