What frequency is APRS on in the USA?

144.390 MHz FM, in the 2 m band. It is the national APRS channel across the United States and is used at 1200 baud Bell 202 AFSK. The same frequency is used in Canada and most of the Americas.

Is the 2 meter APRS frequency the same everywhere in the US?

Yes. Unlike repeater allocations, 144.390 MHz is a single nationwide APRS channel in the United States, so one radio setting works from Maine to Hawaii. Alaska also uses 144.390 MHz.

What digipeater path should I use in the United States?

WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 for a mobile in normal terrain, or just WIDE2-1 for a fixed station with good coverage. Longer paths like WIDE2-2 are discouraged on 144.390 because the channel is already heavily loaded in most of the country.

Why is 144.390 MHz so busy in the US?

Every APRS station in the country shares one 1200-baud channel, and generous digipeater paths multiply each beacon several times over. In dense metropolitan areas the channel can approach saturation, which is why short paths and sensible beacon intervals matter more in the US than almost anywhere else.

APRS Frequency USA — 144.390 MHz

The APRS frequency in the United States is 144.390 MHz, FM, on the 2 m band, at 1200 baud Bell 202 AFSK. One national channel, coast to coast, including Alaska and Hawaii. Set it once and it works everywhere in the country.

That single sentence answers the question most people arrive with. The rest of this page covers the things that decide whether your beacons actually reach the network once you are on the right channel: the path you set, the congestion on the channel, and how to check coverage where you live before blaming the radio.

If you want the worldwide picture instead, see APRS Frequencies by Country. If you are crossing the northern border, APRS Frequency Canada applies the moment you do — though the answer there is the same number.

The Source

144.390 MHz sits in the 2 m band segment the ARRL band plan designates for digital packet operation. It is IARU Region 2 practice, which is why the Americas broadly agree on it while Europe uses 144.800 MHz.

There is no legal requirement to use 144.390 for APRS in the US. It is a coordinated convention, and it holds because everybody's equipment ships pre-set to it.

Set It Correctly, Not Approximately

Three settings that people get wrong on the way in:

Mode is FM, not one of the digital voice modes. APRS is analogue AFSK tones over an FM carrier.
Baud rate is 1200, not 9600. Some radios expose a 9600 option for the same band; on 144.390 nothing will hear you.
Frequency step matters. A radio stepping in 5 kHz increments will land on 144.390 cleanly. One left on a 12.5 kHz step may not offer it at all.

The Path Is the Part That Matters

Getting the frequency right puts you on the channel. Getting the path right decides whether you get gated to the network without annoying two states worth of operators.

The US convention:

Mobile in ordinary terrain: WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1. The WIDE1-1 gets picked up by a nearby fill-in digipeater, WIDE2-1 gives it one wide-area hop after that.
Fixed station with a decent antenna: WIDE2-1. You do not need the fill-in hop if you already reach a wide-area digi directly.
High altitude, including any balloon payload: WIDE2-1 or no path at all. From altitude a single beacon is already heard by dozens of digipeaters.

What to avoid: WIDE2-2, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2, and anything longer. Each extra hop multiplies your packet across a wider area, and on a channel this loaded that is the behaviour that gets a callsign talked about on the local mailing list.

Why the Channel Is So Congested

The US runs the entire country's APRS traffic through one 1200-baud channel. Europe does the same on 144.800, but the US has a denser digipeater network and a longer-established culture of generous paths, which multiplies each beacon further.

The practical consequences for a new station:

Beacon intervals of 1-2 minutes from a stationary vehicle are antisocial. Use smart beaconing so a parked car goes quiet.
If your packets are not getting through in a metropolitan area, the cause is more often collision than coverage.
A fill-in digipeater on WIDE1-1 in a coverage hole helps the network. Another wide-area digi in a city that already has six does not.

LoRa APRS in the US

LoRa APRS in the United States generally runs on 433.775 MHz, the same de-facto worldwide channel used in Europe, with BW 125 kHz, SF12, CR 4:5. Some US communities also experiment in the 902-928 MHz band.

433.775 falls inside the US 70 cm amateur allocation, so licensed operation is fine, but that band is shared with a lot of Part 15 activity. Check what your local LoRa APRS group is actually using before you deploy an iGate — regional practice varies more in the US than the single European channel suggests.

HF APRS from the US

For coverage beyond the reach of VHF digipeaters — offshore, remote backcountry, mobile across empty stretches of the Mountain West — the 30 m HF channel applies: dial 10.1476 MHz USB (equivalently the legacy 10.151 MHz LSB), 300 baud. Robust Packet runs at 10.1473 MHz USB.

Check your licence class privileges on 30 m before transmitting; the band is CW and data only, no phone.

Confirming Coverage Where You Are

Rather than guessing whether 144.390 reaches you, look at what is already being heard nearby:

Open the United States station list and see which digipeaters and iGates are currently active.
Click through to any nearby station's page to see its last-heard time, symbol and path.
Tune 144.390 in FM and listen for two minutes. Short modem bursts every few seconds in a populated area, less often in the country.
Beacon once at low power and check whether you appear on the live map within a minute or two.

If you hear traffic but never appear, the problem is almost always the path or the TNC audio level, not the frequency.

APRS Frequencies by Country — the full worldwide reference table.
APRS Frequency Canada — same channel, different digipeater culture.
APRS iGate Setup — feeding 144.390 into APRS-IS.
Smart Beaconing — how not to flood a busy channel.
APRS Packet Decoder — paste a raw frame and read the path back.