Use of OGN to track club aircraft

[[email protected]]

It's been admittedly a lousy spring for soaring in Houston this year so we have had much time to do maintenance and upgrades on the fleet (if this weather keeps up, snorkels will be next). I have been installing FLARM in our club aircraft this winter, purely for the anti-collision features. It seems to me that making that position information available to our field officer of the day would be quite useful, and this has led me to OGN.

A few items...

1) There don't seem to be any OGN receivers operating in the USA. Is there a reason for this?

2) most of our serious cross country pilots use SPOT, and we often have the glideport.aero website up on the big screen in the clubhouse so people on the ground can see what is going on. Would love to be able to combine our locally created radio derived tracking information with the satellite derived data and get a single view. Anybody from glideport.aero want comment on this, would love to work with you on that. Maybe there is a way to do it already.

3) The DIY OGN tracking transmitters are a great fit for us for this application. We are only slowly building out FLARM in the fleet as it costs a couple thousand dollars per ship to outfit. I could add tracking so we could at least see the whole fleet for $50 per ship. We have 7 aircraft in the fleet, so money is pretty significant.

4) radio range won't be a big problem for us as its flat here and we have friends at airports all over the area. We can get good coverage of a wide area, but would still like to hear what people get for range so I can plan. Really... No hype.

Thoughts?


Mark

[David Kinsell[_2_]]

On Wed, 20 May 2015 06:04:00 -0700, mark.lenox wrote:

> It's been admittedly a lousy spring for soaring in Houston this year so
> we have had much time to do maintenance and upgrades on the fleet (if
> this weather keeps up, snorkels will be next). I have been installing
> FLARM in our club aircraft this winter, purely for the anti-collision
> features. It seems to me that making that position information
> available to our field officer of the day would be quite useful, and
> this has led me to OGN.
>
> A few items...
>
> 1) There don't seem to be any OGN receivers operating in the USA. Is
> there a reason for this?
>
> 2) most of our serious cross country pilots use SPOT, and we often have
> the glideport.aero website up on the big screen in the clubhouse so
> people on the ground can see what is going on. Would love to be able
> to combine our locally created radio derived tracking information with
> the satellite derived data and get a single view. Anybody from
> glideport.aero want comment on this, would love to work with you on
> that. Maybe there is a way to do it already.
>
> 3) The DIY OGN tracking transmitters are a great fit for us for this
> application. We are only slowly building out FLARM in the fleet as it
> costs a couple thousand dollars per ship to outfit. I could add
> tracking so we could at least see the whole fleet for $50 per ship. We
> have 7 aircraft in the fleet, so money is pretty significant.
>
> 4) radio range won't be a big problem for us as its flat here and we
> have friends at airports all over the area. We can get good coverage of
> a wide area, but would still like to hear what people get for range so I
> can plan. Really... No hype.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> Mark

The future of OGN using Flarm data is cloudy, at best:

https://www.change.org/p/mr-urs-rothacher-flarm-chairman-petition-against-
flarm-decision-to-encrypt-the-communication-protocol

Why OGN hasn't caught on in the US may have something to do with the
different spectrum used by the Flarms, not sure. Plus the shakey start
for Flarms here.

People I tend to fly with are happy with SPOT and similar. They provide
better SAR capabilities, with the side benefit of entertaining the ground
crew adequately. Cost is more but they work better.

-Dave

[Dave Leonard]

On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 7:04:03 AM UTC-6, wrote:
> It's been admittedly a lousy spring for soaring in Houston this year so we have had much time to do maintenance and upgrades on the fleet (if this weather keeps up, snorkels will be next). I have been installing FLARM in our club aircraft this winter, purely for the anti-collision features. It seems to me that making that position information available to our field officer of the day would be quite useful, and this has led me to OGN.
>
> A few items...
>
> 1) There don't seem to be any OGN receivers operating in the USA. Is there a reason for this?
>
> 2) most of our serious cross country pilots use SPOT, and we often have the glideport.aero website up on the big screen in the clubhouse so people on the ground can see what is going on. Would love to be able to combine our locally created radio derived tracking information with the satellite derived data and get a single view. Anybody from glideport.aero want comment on this, would love to work with you on that. Maybe there is a way to do it already.
>
> 3) The DIY OGN tracking transmitters are a great fit for us for this application. We are only slowly building out FLARM in the fleet as it costs a couple thousand dollars per ship to outfit. I could add tracking so we could at least see the whole fleet for $50 per ship. We have 7 aircraft in the fleet, so money is pretty significant.
>
> 4) radio range won't be a big problem for us as its flat here and we have friends at airports all over the area. We can get good coverage of a wide area, but would still like to hear what people get for range so I can plan.. Really... No hype.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> Mark

The current version of OGN software does work in North America, but it takes different configuration settings from what is used in Europe, and I don't think they are documented currently. The differences break the nice automated installers which are helping with the proliferation in Europe. The current North America version also provides less frequent position updates due to the way it handles the frequency hopping.

It can still run on remarkably inexpensive hardware. But more processing power can help with update frequency to some extent by processing more frequency hop slots simultaneously. With a Raspberry Pi2, updates on the average of every 8 seconds are possible.

Range is mostly determined by the ground station antenna. It could be a bit better than the air-to-air range with a good high gain antenna, but don't expect miracles. Its far shorter than line-of-sight.

The OGN tracker software for the little DIY devices will likely need to be modified to work in North America, at least to change the operating frequency. And maybe to further change operating mode to meet FCC requirements for co-existence with everything else in the unlicensed ISM band (reduced power or frequency hopping).

It seems to me that this could be very handy in a contest for a CD to observe the launch and start area, particularly when conditions are tricky.