Communicating with YAAC

Once you have configured YAAC, you can start communicating through it.

The main window of YAAC displays a geographical map, upon which located APRS stations and objects will be plotted. Other views are available and can be selected from the View menu. The main window also has other menu options for locating specific stations and sending messages to those stations.

The first two buttons above the map control zooming in and out. The third button pans the map to the local station's position. The fourth button pans to latitude/longitude (0,0) (also known as the Coast of Africa), where stations who have not transmitted their position yet will be plotted until their position is updated. The fifth button (labelled "BCN") forces immediate transmission of all beacons (useful for testing and in use cases where automatic beaconing is not permitted). The map's current view can also be adjusted from the keyboard with the following keyboard keys:

• ↑ - pan up (north) one-tenth of the map height
• ↓ - pan down (south) one-tenth of the map height
• ← - pan left (west) one-tenth of the map width
• → - pan right (east) one-tenth of the map width
• Home - pan so the current location of YAAC is the center of the map
• + - zoom in twice as close as the current zoom level
• - - zoom out twice as far as the current zoom level
• Page Up - pan up (north) 90% of the map height
• Page Down - pan down (south) 90% of the map height
• spacebar - retransmit all the currently defined and enabled beacons immediately (not waiting for the next normal retry) through the preferred radio interface. This operates the same as the BCN button.
• window context menu - display the map popup menu at the last map location of the mouse

An area at the bottom left of the main window displays the current coordinates (in degrees latitude and longitude, and Maidenhead grid locator) of the mouse cursor position on the map. The remainder of the bottom contains fields for composing arbitrary short text messages to send to other stations.