Fleet Tracking

[Tubacap]

Does anyone know if their wing tracks their aircraft in real time using some sort of commercial solution?  I am looking at Spot and Shout Nano and am wondering if there are any solutions without the an annual subscription plan.

[Al Sayre]

MS Wing recently purchased several SPOT units.

[Major Lord]

William,

I am in touch with a few members who are experimenting with using the technology from the ham radio world, "APRS" ( Automatic Packet Reporting System) for use with our extant network of VHF transceivers, so no fees would apply. Arizona Wing had a system like this up and running at one point. In the Amateur Radio world, trackers, weather stations, etc, can all report information besides positions, altitude, direction of travel, etc. The APRS protocol can also be used to send or exchange information as rapid burst of data over our standard frequencies. To get an idea what this looks like, take a look at a website called APRS.FI (finland). In the Amateur radio system, data is ported over to the internet, where it is then made available to mapping websites. Aprs.fi, the foremost of these sites, uses Google maps to display tracks and positions, but CAP could choose to stick to a radio-based system only and dispense with the Internet part of things if they were too timid to use something as unsecure as the web. You can do a lot of things, like have a miniature keyboard to send "e-mail" or program F keys to send fixed messages (Push F1 to send "Op's Normal" or push F2 to transmit "Target Located".  Airplanes can be used to repeat, or as we call it, "digipeat" ground teams, base stations, and other other stations on our net automatically. It would cost about $50.00 per aircraft to add just a simple encoder and GPS to the microphone line of a CAP aircraft for a tracker only device. FULL DISCLOSURE: I manufacture APRS tracking systems, none of which could ever be used in CAP since they could never be NTIA-kosher. My distributor manufactures encoders and decoders ( sometimes called TNC's, for "Terminal Node Controllers", under the brand name Byonics) I have no interest in profiting from CAP, in fact just the opposite is true, Byonics and I have donated equipment to CAP units flying high altitude balloons, and I would do whatever I could (without going broke) to help CAP setup a network.



Major Lord

[wuzafuzz]

An APRS system in CAP would be very useful. 

Can we get an adequate data rate on narrow-band channels?  If yes, APRS would be fairly easy if paired with NTIA compliant radios and permitted by regulation.  We have plenty of simplex frequencies so it would be fairly easy to designate one for data.  Probably would have to be analog though.  P-25 vocoders would likely make a mess of the APRS packets (I've never tried it).  It it worked P-25 could permit encryption and eliminate OPSEC concerns.

One of my sample APRS tracks, a trip from Utah to Colorado:  Path   Imagine doing that for a ground team or aircraft.  That would beat the tar out voice traffic updates.

Here are some articles discussing airborne use of APRS on amateur frequencies.  Those of you who fly outside of CAP might find this interesting enough to get your ham ticket.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~sbuc/journal/tracker.htm

http://www.dvatp.com/aviation/miscellaneous/aprs_tracking/

I've occasionally compared airborne APRS tracks to flight data in Flightaware.com and saw the data from APRS more quickly.


Updated to fix broken URL.

[RADIOMAN015]

William,

I am in touch with a few members who are experimenting with using the technology from the ham radio world, "APRS" ( Automatic Packet Reporting System) for use with our extant network of VHF transceivers, so no fees would apply. Arizona Wing had a system like this up and running at one point. In the Amateur Radio world, trackers, weather stations, etc, can all report information besides positions, altitude, direction of travel, etc.

The issue is that anyone using this device in a specific aircraft would have to be licensed as an amateur radio operator (technician class) by the FCC, otherwise the device would have to be turned off  (e.g. control operator presence).  Also the ARRL has taken a position that any large organization that is government supported should be utilizing other means of tracking their asset, not using amateur radio because it is the cheapest way.

There are other options that have been previously discussed on this board  e.g.
http://www.spidertracks.com/ 
RM

[JeffDG]

William,

I am in touch with a few members who are experimenting with using the technology from the ham radio world, "APRS" ( Automatic Packet Reporting System) for use with our extant network of VHF transceivers, so no fees would apply. Arizona Wing had a system like this up and running at one point. In the Amateur Radio world, trackers, weather stations, etc, can all report information besides positions, altitude, direction of travel, etc.

The issue is that anyone using this device in a specific aircraft would have to be licensed as an amateur radio operator (technician class) by the FCC, otherwise the device would have to be turned off  (e.g. control operator presence).  Also the ARRL has taken a position that any large organization that is government supported should be utilizing other means of tracking their asset, not using amateur radio because it is the cheapest way.

There are other options that have been previously discussed on this board  e.g.
http://www.spidertracks.com/ 
RM

I don't think he was proposing using amateur band radio, but using CAP's spectrum that we use today, with out network of receivers already in place to receive the data... parallel to ARRL's network, not utilizing it.

[SarDragon]

I have been lead to believe that CAP no longer has any VHF frequencies set aside for digital/data transmission, and that the frequencies we do have assigned, both simplex and duplex, are for voice only. The emissions chart in the 100-1 bears this out.

[Paradoc]

Does anyone know if their wing tracks their aircraft in real time using some sort of commercial solution?  I am looking at Spot and Shout Nano and am wondering if there are any solutions without the an annual subscription plan.

Wyoming Wing uses SPOT quite effectively to track our aircraft and ground teams during missions.  The link below is accessible via the Wyoming Wing public website.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0o9qXbl0b9ORfi7SQtpLnLDkpDiDtAKGo

[peter rabbit]

Does anyone know if their wing tracks their aircraft in real time using some sort of commercial solution?  I am looking at Spot and Shout Nano and am wondering if there are any solutions without the an annual subscription plan.

Wyoming Wing uses SPOT quite effectively to track our aircraft and ground teams during missions.  The link below is accessible via the Wyoming Wing public website.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0o9qXbl0b9ORfi7SQtpLnLDkpDiDtAKGo

What are the criteria you use for turning SPOT off for OPSec?

[Mustang]

Utah Wing also uses SPOT trackers in all of its aircraft and some of its vehicles (stole the idea from Wyoming Wing, thank you very much!). The tracker webpage(s) are password-protected to maintain OPSEC. All in all, a very cost-effective system.