Steam Bunny Bluff

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Originally Posted by Wheeze

yes, i think sat phones may be the way. call charges need watching but they are for short comms only.
i have added quite a lot of content to the website but i need to get some other things done.
1. A downloadable OS map of the route.
2. Pictures of the route.
3. finalise the online entry page.
Let me know what you think.

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I do think they should be tested in the vicinity before settling on them.
One of the foibles of VHF radios is the difficulty of hearing in wind to the point that RYA (yacht racing) give warnings about them.

It is interesting that texting is a lot cheaper and can be managed over a connected smart phone to one of the sat tracker devices, and text does not suffer the " hearing" problem - it also leaves a record - which clearly begs the question as to whether text rather than voice based comms is the answer for the type of short message needed.

Is there not some technology linked in to Strava / Garmin GPS tracking that can give live tracking?

If not, I bet it will be here soon at the pace these things seem to develop.

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Originally Posted by Witton Park

Is there not some technology linked in to Strava / Garmin GPS tracking that can give live tracking?

If not, I bet it will be here soon at the pace these things seem to develop.

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There already is. Delorme have their own mapshare site which allows view of track and message data, and that is embeddable into web or Facebook pages for live update - it is also exportable in GPX to anywhere else eg strava. There is an in reach app which allows people to view ( and text) on smart phones.

I know I have a bit of a vested interest in trackers.. but even if you don't use the trackers I offer, please don't use "Delorme" they were used on the recent International Multi sport event in Costa Rica (we provided the web portal). They were awful and about the same price as Yellowbrick to hire - Yellowbrick is lot more reliable but way over the top for a fell race.. some people on this forum would have a seizure if they saw the weekend hire price of iridium tracking.

James

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Originally Posted by howfast

I know I have a bit of a vested interest in trackers.. but even if you don't use the trackers I offer, please don't use "Delorme" they were used on the recent International Multi sport event in Costa Rica (we provided the web portal). They were awful and about the same price as Yellowbrick to hire - Yellowbrick is lot more reliable but way over the top for a fell race.. some people on this forum would have a seizure if they saw the weekend hire price of iridium tracking.

James

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James - useful info. But I would love to know what you mean by "awful" - what precisely were the problems with it? Amazon reviews are (so far) good.

There are two threads going on here - first the use of a couple of phones in critical places, the other chalk and cheese is trackers for runners.

There are also two separate issues even in tracking - safety tracking, and detailed route update. For safety only, being able to say where someone is, noting that if they are incapicitated by definition they are stopped, so the 10 minute updates are not a problem. So long as they can be pinged whilst stopped. Live tracking (whilst a great spectator sport! is not the issue)

The ability to ping position and text and vice versa, is all that is needed for safety. So iridium texting should be cheap on that basis.

My suggestion was trialling "whatever" beforehand seeing what problems actually were.

The future of using them would have to be , buying a job lot and amortizing their use over 3 years at 30 races a year, which case they could be brought to the order of £5 per person per race: when proven and if cheap, I am guessing a lot of "wild" events would want to use them.

Historically technology costs fall with time. As will these. Additional competitors will appear.

I am not decrying "your kind" of tracking except to say whilst it collects continuously it only dumps data when it can get a connection, so defacto if someone goes in radio shadow, you do not know where they are, (eg from descent of scafell to top of yewbarrow) which the sat track should almost anywhere.

As a piece of history , I was trying to work out how to use base stations to unscramble GPS in the days of US selective positioning, figuring that sooner or later the use of them in sport would become vast. 5 years before they did... I was also one of the first in UK to process full images in real time on PCs, at a time when you had to do that in hardware and cameras were in the main tube devices...CCD were very expensive back then figuring that would become big. So I get a few right (and just as many wrong) my prediction is, sooner or later sat functionality and tracking will become common place.

We shall see.

The website is now up but not live. It is available for view and comment on here please. I will want to shape and finalise it to go live beginning of May.
Check steambunnybluff.co.uk

Wheeze if you want an OS route map (25k and/or 50k) send me the route as GPX/KML/etc and I'll make a jpg for you.. I have entire uk digitally. PM me for my email address.

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Originally Posted by alwaysinjured

James - useful info. But I would love to know what you mean by "awful" - what precisely were the problems with it? Amazon reviews are (so far) good.

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Like randomly not updating for hours on end.. Really please don't. If need be PM me for details.

Likewise SPOT, I would have happily drop kicked 80 of those wretched orange boxes in to the southern ocean at the end of AR world champs in Tasmania back in 2011 - waste of time and give people a false sense of security.

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Originally Posted by alwaysinjured

I am not decrying "your kind" of tracking except to say whilst it collects continuously it only dumps data when it can get a connection, so defacto if someone goes in radio shadow, you do not know where they are, (eg from descent of scafell to top of yewbarrow) which the sat track should almost anywhere.

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We have made quite a number of changes over the winter - I'm keen to see a BG and how the trackers perform. Also be good to see what coverage there is on this event. Its rare that any event in this country would not have at least 95% coverage. As you say lets test and see how well it performs. I'm more than happy to lend a tracker and show what is buffered / live data on any event that seriously wants to consider using them.

James, I suspect I will want to arrange a further trackere loan soon. Will that be possible? Also, do you have any experience of sat phones?
My main concern is that I have to be 100% confident of being able to contact the safety refuges on the race. My worry is that it is unfeasible to test VHF performance ahead of the event so it would be a real gamble...admittedly the odds are favourable but I want to eradicate gamble in this one critical area. Essentially I am looking at a 4 node network...Race HQ and the 3 safety refuges....plus one mobile to the mobile search team.