SPOT Possibilities

Now that my SPOT unit has arrived and I got to fly with it yesterday,
I have some thoughts.

1. Do we have any good contacts with the company? I think some
modifications could be very useful for the soaring community. The
recent Australian Gran Prix was nice, but track every 2 to 3 minutes
would have made it much more fun.

The SPOT being "push" technology would be very easy to modify to send
a tracking signal on a shorter interval than the current 10 minute
cycle. With about 25% of the signals missed this would still give a
great way to watch races from the ground.

I think it would be great to work with the SPOT people to allow us to
do this for short periods, like contest and then switch back to 10
minutes when just normally flying xc. I assume the many of the smart
EE's on this list could figure out how to mod a SPOT unit to send more
often. We could also install an external battery supply so that the
two AA's would be only needed outside of the planes.

Tim:

It's my understanding (but this might be wrong!) that the SPOT
transmits its position every thirty seconds or so but this is only
picked up when one of the satellites transits overhead within signal
view. If this is indeed the case, the limitation is the number of
satellites, which could be harder to increase than transmit power!

I certainly agree on its usefulness. I never travel anywhere by light
plane, glider, boot or mountain bike without it now.

Mike

On Dec 8, 2:11*pm, Mike the Strike wrote:
Tim:

It's my understanding (but this might be wrong!) that the SPOT
transmits its position every thirty seconds or so but this is only
picked up when one of the satellites transits overhead within signal
view. *If this is indeed the case, the limitation is the number of
satellites, which could be harder to increase than transmit power!

I certainly agree on its usefulness. *I never travel anywhere by light
plane, glider, boot or mountain bike without it now.

Mike

Nope the 30 second thing is wrong.

The GlobalStar satellites have very good coverage (but not worldwide).
The image of Satellites zipping by and having significant time gaps in
the coverage is not really correct. If they had to transmit every 30
seconds to get one message every 10 minutes they would have serious
problems. One of the reasons that really fast updates are not offered
is the increase in message collisions that could start occurring in
their system. The other reason may be marketing, If I was providing
high resolution satellite tracking with rapid updates it would be at a
lot more than the current SPOT prices.

BTW discussions of GlobalStar coverage will likely run into lots of
things about their GlobalStar satellite communications reliability.
GlobalStar have been facing lots of issues with the degradations of
their S-band amplifiers used for voice. The SPOT and other simplex
devices use their L-Band network which appears very reliable.

Also agree SPOT is very useful, I always use mine for trackin when
flying.

Darryl

On Dec 8, 2:25*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Dec 8, 2:11*pm, Mike the Strike wrote:

Tim:

It's my understanding (but this might be wrong!) that the SPOT
transmits its position every thirty seconds or so but this is only
picked up when one of the satellites transits overhead within signal
view. *If this is indeed the case, the limitation is the number of
satellites, which could be harder to increase than transmit power!

I certainly agree on its usefulness. *I never travel anywhere by light
plane, glider, boot or mountain bike without it now.

Mike

Nope the 30 second thing is wrong.

The GlobalStar satellites have very good coverage (but not worldwide).
The image of Satellites zipping by and having significant time gaps in
the coverage is not really *correct. If they had to transmit every 30
seconds to get one message every 10 minutes they would have serious
problems. One of the reasons that really fast updates are not offered
is the increase in message collisions that could start occurring in
their system. The other reason may be marketing, If I was providing
high resolution satellite tracking with rapid updates it would be at a
lot more than the current SPOT prices.

BTW discussions of GlobalStar coverage will likely run into lots of
things about their GlobalStar satellite communications reliability.
GlobalStar have been facing lots of issues with the degradations of
their S-band amplifiers used for voice. The SPOT and other simplex
devices use their L-Band network which appears very reliable.

Also agree SPOT is very useful, I always use mine for trackin when
flying.

Darryl

They have 48 satellites at 1400 km orbits. That plus the fact that the
constellation was architected to support voice and duplex data
communications would indicate that you wouldn't have to wait long at
all for a bird to be in view - in fact, most of the time you should
have at least two. I don't know what the bandwidth of L-band is, but
I'd be surprised if SPOT is taxing the capacity. Lee Kuhlke talks to
the SPOT guys regularly and has given lots of input. I'm sure he could
get an answer on tracking intervals. I recall him saying something
about a shorter interval being in the works.

9B

On Mon, 8 Dec 2008 10:01:29 -0800 (PST), Tim Taylor
wrote:

The
recent Australian Gran Prix was nice, but track every 2 to 3 minutes
would have made it much more fun.

If I understand correctly, SPOT reports position, but no altitude. Is
it true? If so, I see very little potential for competition tracking.

Aldo

On Dec 9, 4:44*am, cernauta wrote:
On Mon, 8 Dec 2008 10:01:29 -0800 (PST), Tim Taylor

wrote:
The
recent Australian Gran Prix was nice, but track every 2 to 3 minutes
would have made it much more fun.

If I understand correctly, SPOT reports position, but no altitude. Is
it true? If so, I see very little potential for competition tracking.

Aldo

The goal would not be to replace the current gps loggers, but to
provide real-time data back to the soaring site and the world to watch
competitions. In areas where there is very little cell coverage this
would be the only means for tracking a contest.

Some sites in Europe have been able to use cell based systems, other
sites have placed a receiver in a plane that acts as a relay site.
The SPOT systems could give relative positions currently as you said,
but I am sure in the near future the altitude data could be sent as
well. Again this is part of opening communications with the company.
If there is a need and a market most companies are interested in
selling their products. Most products change by innovation, newer
generations have additional features.

Here's an example (Posted by Mal Bruce on the Aus-Soaring newsgroup)
of newer and more expensive technology, logging flights for a charity
event for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).
Tracplus has a variety of tracker hardware options, but they are more
vehicle based than personal devices.
At the moment the SPOT device is good for what it's designed, and
will get better.
Jim

http://www.alsworldflight.com/media.php

2 Women, 7 Days, 1 World Record for ALS
The current Dash for a Cure World Speed Attempt
Trackplus onboard Spot onboard and another GPS GSM system onboard

https://web.daestra.com/maps/application.html public public

You can pull up the historical data on the above link by date for the
Grand Prix tracker renamed Aerotrac 01

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/f...f00ab811bf4386

Spot link for the mooney

http://www.aerotrac.com.au/images/ne...hermal%202.jpg

http://www.aerotrac.com.au/images/ne...hermal%201.jpg

http://www.tracplus.co.nz/NAL9601-DGS-LP.aspx

http://www.aerotrac.com.au/news.htm

On Dec 9, 3:44*am, cernauta wrote:
On Mon, 8 Dec 2008 10:01:29 -0800 (PST), Tim Taylor

wrote:
The
recent Australian Gran Prix was nice, but track every 2 to 3 minutes
would have made it much more fun.

If I understand correctly, SPOT reports position, but no altitude. Is
it true? If so, I see very little potential for competition tracking.

Aldo

SPOT does not currently report altitude. That would be useful for a
lot more uses in our sport than just competition tracking. The
underlying GlobalStar simplex links support extended multi-packet data
transfer beyond the limited data space in the packets used today. So
in principle this is all possible for SPOT to do in future.

For signaling location and tracking glider flights, etc. SPOT is still
extremely useful today.

Axonn the company that makes the SPOT and all other GlobalStar simplex
data devices have products that would enable build a custom solution
to be built for more advanced tracking. Iridium has products as well
(works differently and usually more expensive). If I was SPOT and
building a product to report altitude for the aviation market, it
would cost significantly more than current SPOT messenger and
subscription prices.

Darryl

On Dec 9, 11:03*am, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Dec 9, 3:44*am, cernauta wrote:

On Mon, 8 Dec 2008 10:01:29 -0800 (PST), Tim Taylor

wrote:
The
recent Australian Gran Prix was nice, but track every 2 to 3 minutes
would have made it much more fun.

If I understand correctly, SPOT reports position, but no altitude. Is
it true? If so, I see very little potential for competition tracking.

Aldo

SPOT does not currently report altitude. That would be useful for a
lot more uses in our sport than just competition tracking. The
underlying GlobalStar simplex links support extended multi-packet data
transfer beyond the limited data space in the packets used today. So
in principle this is all possible for SPOT to do in future.

For signaling location and tracking glider flights, etc. SPOT is still
extremely useful today.

Axonn the company that makes the SPOT and all other GlobalStar simplex
data devices have products that would enable build a custom solution
to be built for more advanced tracking. Iridium has products as well
(works differently and usually more expensive). If I was SPOT and
building a product to report altitude for the aviation market, it
would cost significantly more than current SPOT messenger and
subscription prices.

Darryl

That may be the rub. The small size of the soaring market and the oft-
demonstrated price elasticity of demand among its piots may make it
impossible to cover the development and incremental operating costs.

One of our pilots has been in contact with the folks at SPOT several
times. He has some good recommendations on things that could improve
SPOT's service to the soaring community, but they recognize that ours
is not a large population. They are selling more subscriptions to
hikers and rockclimbers than they are to soaring pilots, I guess.
Anyway, his contact there is . Soaring
pilots with specific recommendations on how to make SPOT more useful
for our community might want to be in contact with Bennett.

Fred LaSor
SoaringNV
Minden, NV