On Monday, October 31, 2016 at 6:06:08 PM UTC+3, Frank Whiteley wrote:
On Sunday, October 30, 2016 at 11:09:11 PM UTC-6, Sean wrote:
Not sure what FAIs end game strategy is with SGP yet...the right producer and it's off to the races...and yes, I've talked to several producers. Longshot is an understatement but you never know...

SGP ramped up as a high impact, professional formula racing series that would/could be shown on sports channels live and in repeats. That faltered. I don't know if the producers of the Chile SGP ever recouped their costs (helicopter video platform costs were $250,000 alone). He tried with a Kickstarter to produce another soaring promotion, but all contributors received were their DVD's and headgear, so SGP format wound up with IGC.

The World Class adopted the PW-5 and it was flown in the WAG in Turkey. As a design class, it could be produced by anyone, which seemed a purist approach. I don't now what international competitions say about skiis, rifles, sailing boats, and other equipment sports. Anyway, apart from the WAG, the PW-5 and World Class did not inspire a majority of participants. Many others opined the World Class should have been based on a 40:1 glider, the LS-4, which is one or, if not the most produced, single seater. WGC adoption might have kept it production for many more years.

The Chile SGP and the Italian WAG 2009 both used Yellowbrick.com for real time tracking solutions, though I think both used different display servers. IIRC, over 5000 remote viewers watched these real time, so the displays were slightly different though both were excellent and engaging to the point where you could see pilots make divergent (and sometimes wrong) decisions. Spot and InReach are not comparable. Yellowbrick was not cheap. Helicopters and live feeds are not cheap, so sponsorship and advertising would be needed to make it happen. Probably out of the question for qualifiers. However, looking forward to about 2020, there may be opportunities.

On the technical side, satellite MUX space is still limited. Iridium NEXT has yet to fly, but it could open the door for real time cockpit video. Whether there are other options affordable and available, I can't say. Kind of like the dark (unlit) fiber infrastructure. Kind of hard to find out who and where. I'm locally aware of optical fiber that's been around for a long time, but never lit, despite the fees paid to bring high speed Internet to the masses. I still feel like I'm in frontier land and now Google has stalled on their Google fiber.

Gee, if only pilots could live (or slightly buffer) feed their soaring flights to their Facebook pages. This could be possible by 2020, just around the corner.

Frank Whiteley

Don't forget the 2006 NZ Gliding Grand Prix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc_aUMLEwNk

I thought the computer graphics at that event were superior to those that have followed.