SPOT tracking for 2009 contests?

Frank wrote:
On Feb 12, 9:27 pm, Tim Taylor wrote:
On Feb 12, 2:39 pm, Frank wrote:





Our club (CCSC) is starting to think about providing real-time SPOT-
based glider track displays for ground crew/spectators for our 2009
Region 6 contest, and I was wondering if other clubs were considering
similar programs.
Sure would be a cool thing if the SSA and/or SRA were to provide a web
page link for contest organizers to display glider tracks. Then All
the organizer would have to do is tell SPOT users what url to use for
their 'spotteam' OK hit, and maybe what message to use (maybe a
formatted message from which the site could extract the comp ID?). A
contest organizer could then display the web page on a big screen
somewhere, or individuals could display it on their own laptops/pc's.
Each contest could have its own webpage, and anyone from anywhere
could see how their favorite glider pilot was doing. This could
really help to popularize glider flying in general and glider racing
in particular.
Any comments/thoughts?
Frank(TA)
Frank,

http://track.glidingmaps.com/

Yes the SSA should work to provide this for all contests, better yet a
tie in with OLC so we can see where everyone is everyday.

Also see the threads from this newsgroup:

SPOT Possibilities (Dec 8 2008, 11:01 am)

and

See Spots Run (Jan 2 2009, 3:09 pm)

Tim (TT)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yes, the more I think about this, the more I think each club could
have a permanent page on the SSA site where SPOT equipped pilots could
send SPOT tracking messages. Such a site would be very useful on a day-
to-day basis for tracking XC practice tasks, informal contests, etc.
The only thing extra that would be required for a formal contest would
be a way of displaying the task.

This seems like such a no-brainer that it will probably never happen,
at least not officially. I for one will be happy to volunteer my time
and limited programming skills for such a project

TA


It would probably be pretty easy to set up -- go to the appropriate part
of the SSA website, click on a pilot's name, and you would be redirected
to the pilot's SPOT tracking page. In fact, the SSA website already has
a page for each SSA member (though the last time I looked I couldn't
figure out how to access them), and you could put the link there.