aadamson
Well Known Member
So my wife likes to track me when I fly. Usually, when I file IFR you can go to www.flightaware.com and track me live. Go there now and enter n48lh and you'll find my flight home from OSH.
But when I go VFR, there is no way to track me. Well, almost true. I?m a Ham Radio operator. Call Sign N1IP. I usually take a little handheld radio with me when I fly vfr and it can be hooked to a portable gps and there is a national network of stations that listen and capture special broadcast messages, save them on a huge internet based database server and you can then poll them either live or after the fact to view the current location of any Ham that is active on this system. This whole thing is called APRS (Amateur Packet Reporting System).
Well, I took that radio setup with me when I flew from Atlanta (actually Lawrenceville - KLZU, to Fairmont, MN) to meet up with some other Lancair pilots and friends of mine.
I'm able to go back and capture the "track" of that flight and I have tools that will let me bring it up on Google Earth. Usually I can have it show altitude, but for some reason that didn't work this flight.
Anyway, I got the flight, put it in google earth and saved the track. It's attached to the bottom of this post. To see it just download it and load it in google earth (Mac users click it, Window users double click it). If you zoom around and zoom in and out of the various locations, you can see what I flew over and the specific airports that I took off from and landed at. I stopped at one that isn't shown.
Because this entire APRS system uses radio waves that are VHF (same frequency range as airplanes use), if I'm not heard, then the system just links the last 2 locations together. In this case, I wasn't heard when I was in the boonies of IA and on my way to AWG - Washington, AI for fuel. Its actually just south of the last part of the course line.
Anyway, figured I'd share a little low tech tracking technology with ya...
http://www.highrf.com/Rockets/Track For N1IP-3.kmz (Right click the link and save it and then open it with Google Earth loaded.)
But when I go VFR, there is no way to track me. Well, almost true. I?m a Ham Radio operator. Call Sign N1IP. I usually take a little handheld radio with me when I fly vfr and it can be hooked to a portable gps and there is a national network of stations that listen and capture special broadcast messages, save them on a huge internet based database server and you can then poll them either live or after the fact to view the current location of any Ham that is active on this system. This whole thing is called APRS (Amateur Packet Reporting System).
Well, I took that radio setup with me when I flew from Atlanta (actually Lawrenceville - KLZU, to Fairmont, MN) to meet up with some other Lancair pilots and friends of mine.
I'm able to go back and capture the "track" of that flight and I have tools that will let me bring it up on Google Earth. Usually I can have it show altitude, but for some reason that didn't work this flight.
Anyway, I got the flight, put it in google earth and saved the track. It's attached to the bottom of this post. To see it just download it and load it in google earth (Mac users click it, Window users double click it). If you zoom around and zoom in and out of the various locations, you can see what I flew over and the specific airports that I took off from and landed at. I stopped at one that isn't shown.
Because this entire APRS system uses radio waves that are VHF (same frequency range as airplanes use), if I'm not heard, then the system just links the last 2 locations together. In this case, I wasn't heard when I was in the boonies of IA and on my way to AWG - Washington, AI for fuel. Its actually just south of the last part of the course line.
Anyway, figured I'd share a little low tech tracking technology with ya
...http://www.highrf.com/Rockets/Track For N1IP-3.kmz (Right click the link and save it and then open it with Google Earth loaded.)
