The foreign competitions I have viewed can only afford around 10 devices which they randomly distribute daily.

The GlidePort app integrated with SSA contest data and Winscore is freely available to anyone. Contest Directors can take advantage of this system by requesting a Competition Manager user name and password from the SSA. You do not have to be a sanctioned contest to use our Contest system.

Our present obstacle is the reluctance of pilots to download and use the respective smartphone app. The apple version " glide track" is free. The droid version "igc droid" has a small one time fee.

This system has proven its potential over the last two seasons and is getting better as we work out the sync issues (amazingly there seem to be persistent errors with SSA member numbers as people enter their info).

At the Seniors competition Rich provided complementary aux phone batteries (highly recommended) yet only a half dozen pilots used real time (igc style) tracking. You can differentiate them by the bold track info in the left hand pain when selecting tracks.

I would like to emphasize that this is a "entertainment" app and not to be confused with the PLB features that SPOT and InReach provide.

You can also upload igc files to GlidePort and it becomes a very effective analysis tool. Additionally the phone apps allow OLC uploads so you can get your flight on OLC even if you don't have a logger ?

All this for "free"? Yet we wonder "why is the SSA not providing contest tracking"? The answer of course is "we are".

Many thanks to Pedja Bogdanovich, Doug Easton and Guy Buyers for keeping this system functioning and free.

Lane Bush
SSA Tracking Committee