See SPOT run...

[[email protected]]

Gordon Boettger has just taken off from Minden in another record
breaking distance attempt. It's a blue wave day and he is carrying
SPOT. He will be turning it on as soon as he is in the wave...

See where to follow him live @ http://mindensoaringclub.com

[MSC]

On Apr 29, 7:00 am, wrote:
> Gordon Boettger has just taken off from Minden in another record
> breaking distance attempt. It's a blue wave day and he is carrying
> SPOT. He will be turning it on as soon as he is in the wave...
>
> See where to follow him live @http://mindensoaringclub.com

SPOT is running now! Gordon has already been down to California city
and is headed back North.

Track him @ http://mindensoaringclub.com

[[email protected]]

On Apr 29, 7:00 am, wrote:
> Gordon Boettger has just taken off from Minden in another record
> breaking distance attempt. It's a blue wave day and he is carrying
> SPOT. He will be turning it on as soon as he is in the wave...
>
> See where to follow him live @http://mindensoaringclub.com


SPOT is finally running now - There was interference from his other
GPS at the beginning of the flight.

Track the flight at http://mindensoaringclub.com

Thanks for your patience!

[Rick Culbertson]

On Apr 29, 10:15*am, wrote:
> On Apr 29, 7:00 am, wrote:
>
> > Gordon Boettger has just taken off from Minden in another record
> > breaking distance attempt. It's a blue wave day and he is carrying
> > SPOT. He will be turning it on as soon as he is in the wave...
>
> > See where to follow him live @http://mindensoaringclub.com
>
> SPOT is finally running now - There was interference from his other
> GPS at the beginning of the flight.
>
> Track the flight athttp://mindensoaringclub.com
>
> Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for the tip!

Spot use report,
Our club, Black Forest Soaring Society had its first real world XC
Field trial with the Spot GPS tracking system yesterday. One of our
Pilots, Dave Leonard (ZL) was returning from a 500k flight on a less
than perfect day. The last time any of us had radio contact with ZL he
was some 100+ miles away and working his way home. 1.5 hours with out
radio communication due to Pikes Peak between us and our XC pilot, and
in the late afternoon deteriorating conditions we turned on the Spot
web page and presto, all question were answered. We watched the last
3/4 hour of his struggle to get around Pikes Peak and subsequent
landing at Freemont AP some 70 air miles away. Our experience showed
the every 10 minute position reports generally had a 20 minute delay.
But no sweating where or how your missing pilot is, it was an easy
retrieve. I'm sold, and purchased one the week before as well. Now if
only they would add altitude and shorten the delay to the Spot
position report if would be perfect, I understand both are in the
works. I'm sold on the Spot, if your an XC pilot you shouldn’t be
without it, IMHO!
21

[Tuno]

I'm looking forward to the day, hopefully soon, when all pilots in
sanctioned contests will be flying with Spot, and the CD and crews can
watch the race unfold on a live display, as well as friends and family
far away.

Maybe the team at SeeYou can do an interface to their desktop produce.
(Have sockets API, will program!)

2NO

[[email protected]]

from msc's website:
"I spoke to Gordon and he is on the ground safe and sound. The landing
at Lee Vining was as scary as he has ever had. His entire instrument
panel broke off and hit the canopy (along with SPOT) after hitting a
severe turbulence 800 feet over the field. Winds, according to him,
had gusts to 70 knots, and after he landed with a 10 degree crosswind,
he went into the sagebrush. As he opened the canopy to try to get out,
the glider lifted some 3 feet above the ground and went backwards. He
finally made it out, and held on to the wingtips and waited until
people from town came to help. The glider was pushed back by some 10
people to the hangar area, and placed in a more protected area, held
down by some concrete bricks. Pictures to follow..."

Holy smokes!!! glad everyone is OK but that sounds scarier than
hell. that Spot deal sounds pretty slick too. I

[JS]

Lee Vining sounds like it was too exciting.
But Jet Pilot had a good day, 1778 kilometers. Don't think he's set
his shared SPOT page up yet.
Jim
(sans glider)

[nimbus[_2_]]

Glider and Pilot undamaged. 90 degree xwinds with 70-80 gusts and
crazy turbulence.

[MickiMinner]

Hey guys using SPOT,
please answer a question for me.....
when I viewed the SPOT website, it said that you had to push a button
to mark your spot....is there some automatic timer? I can't imagine
that it would be very safe to push the track button every few minutes/
seconds whatever....when I viewed the track of Gordon's flight...I
noticed that it only 5 track points on the XC flight.

What did Dave Leonard do? Hit the button when he started home, or is
there some setting that will track every so often?
Just curious!
Thanks
Micki

[JS]

Hello Micki, Charlie, and anyone interested in this spotty thingy:
There are two service plans. With the basic one you can manually
send messages. With the tracking option, SPOT will attempt to send a
message every 10 minutes, and it will appear on the shared web page.
Altitude is not reported (yet?), but if you're on the ground it will
become obvious after several track points in the same place.
Jim

On Apr 30, 8:55 am, MickiMinner > wrote:
> Hey guys using SPOT,
> please answer a question for me.....
> when I viewed the SPOT website, it said that you had to push a button
> to mark your spot....is there some automatic timer? I can't imagine
> that it would be very safe to push the track button every few minutes/
> seconds whatever....when I viewed the track of Gordon's flight...I
> noticed that it only 5 track points on the XC flight.
>
> What did Dave Leonard do? Hit the button when he started home, or is
> there some setting that will track every so often?
> Just curious!
> Thanks
> Micki

[5Z]

And, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the live track is IMHO, the best
feature of SPOT, especially now that the share page is easily
available.

With live tracking on, if you have an accident that incapacitates you,
and the ELT (if you have one) fails, the SPOT bread crumbs will give
the search party a clue about where to start looking.

It's not perfect, since the reports are not always every 10 minutes -
I've seen a gap of an hour while driving cross country with the SPOT
on my dash last week, but the track is still pretty good.

It's also possible to send an occasional OK message without too much
hassle:

With live tracking enabled, press and hold the OK button until the LED
flashes red

Once it goes out for good, tap the OK button to send the message

Set a countdown timer to go off in 5 or 15 minutes.

If the timer was set for 5 minutes, turn off SPOT, turn it back on and
enable live tracking

If the timer was set for 15 minutes, the OK LED should no longer be
blinking, so just press and hold OK to reenable live tracking.

The timer and alarm is important as you will no doubt forget to
reenable live tracking without it!

The manual OK message is the only way to push a message to someone
with a mobile phone and no web access.

-Tom

[Rick Culbertson]

On Apr 30, 9:55*am, MickiMinner > wrote:
> Hey guys using SPOT,
> please answer a question for me.....
> when I viewed the SPOT website, it said that you had to push a button
> to mark your spot....is there some automatic timer? *I can't imagine
> that it would be very safe to push the track button every few minutes/
> seconds whatever....when I viewed the track of Gordon's flight...I
> noticed that it only 5 track points on the XC flight.
>
> What did Dave Leonard do? *Hit the button when he started home, or is
> there some setting that will track every so often?
> Just curious!
> Thanks
> Micki

Hi Micki & Charlie,
I believe JS and 5Z answered your question, but yes Dave did have the
auto tracking on. I read Gordon had some interference issue early in
his flight so that why it was incomplete.

I can see a day when this kind of simple tracking system will be a
good requirement in a contest, if for no other reason than for safety,
the CM would always know where the contest pilots are! As 2no
suggested the possibilities are endless if someone like "See You"
becomes involved in programs tied into the Spot Tracking. Clubs could
keep an eye on all xc pilots progress or at a contest put up a screen
showing all the pilots progress during a race. This would be very
Spectator friendly for all involved with much less stress concerning
the unknows on the crew and organizers. In any event it will be fun to
see where this goes, I'm reminded of the early days of GPS, See You &
OLC and how the evolution of these great ideas have positively changed
our sport.

See you in Parowan,
21