Follow-on to the above post...
Pat, it was quite the experience watching you in near-real-time, while talking with you on the phone live. What a world we live in!
First, on your Zulus...man do I want a set now! I couldn't believe it when you said you were taxiing, and it was just as clear when you were flying. I couldn't hear any background noise...you could have been next door in a quiet office! As I mentioned, I could hear your transmissions to tower too (but not their replies). Tell ya what, if you combine the real-time tracking with the voice calls, this combo could be a neat way to watch and hear SARL racers on the course as well.
On the tracking, even with a slow connection from a wireless router in a nearby hangar, I was able to watch you move almost in real time. Most of the time your location was very close to what you were calling, your speeds were right on, and in turns, new points were dropped showing you in nearly the same heading as you were calling out on the phone. Really really cool! There were some small gaps, and I had to refresh twice, but I attribute that to a bit of a fragile connection on my end.
That was a great test of the CI-122SP! I know you followed me on my test hop and GPS speed runs, and thanks for texting me what you saw. We'll be able to talk when I save up and get some Zulus!
After we talked on the ground, I was called out on a SAR mission, and was able to put the CI-122SP though some more paces. As you can see from the pics below, it did very well. In those pics, guccidude Dan is the green track, and I am the blue. Dan uses a basic bent whip (the kind with the round white insulator at the base) and was the high SAR bird at 11,500'. I was the low search aircraft, and with the CI-122SP, I tracked well from Stead, through a quick stop at a nearby dirt strip to pick up my observer (the small pattern at Nevada Flyers Airport), along the east side of the ridge while conducting the search (500 agl and below), and when circling over the command post (the small circles to the southeast). Dan and I each did a flight before the mission, and those are the hits to the west of Stead...the mission was to the east, south of Pyramid Lake:
I thought is was very good performance, so its another plug for the Loran antennas. Heck, it even tracked me through a loop on the first hop (the three hits right on top of each other in the upper left corner of each pic...on aprs.fi, it shows the different altitudes!)
By the way Allen, Pat came up with that idea at about the same time our local avionics guy gave me a spare CI-122SP off his dusty back shelf. So the credit goes to Pat, and Lynn at Aviation Classics (two really smart guys!!)
And Pete...a little tidbit on the j-pole: I used it to talk with the CP and to talk with and deconflict from the SAR helo Dan and I were working with. Dan reports I was a little scratchy on it, but with the capability to switch between the two antennae, its a very workable set-up. Still gotta get rid of the noise from the APRS, but Pat may have solved that (or proven where mine's coming from!) Still working on a "speedy" solution for that one!
All in all, a very good bi-coastal APRS kinda day!
Cheers,
Bob
