<html><head></head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Great Post THANKS Darryl,</div><div><br></div><div>I along with a couple of others run APRS aircraft mobile in Gippsland Victoria so really enjoyed your post. Ham Tracker is another great APRS App for IPad/IPod/IPhone. </div><div><br></div><div>I was interested in your comments on coverage as I have not tested 3G to any extent.</div><div><br></div><div>I have ferried a couple of aircraft back from Bundaberg and the VHF APRS coverage is great.</div><div><br></div><div>I look forward to the movie.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers</div><div><br></div><div>Daryl. VK3AWA</div><div><br></div><div><br>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On 19/10/2011, at 10:20 AM, Darryl Smith <<a href="mailto:darryl@radio-active.net.au">darryl@radio-active.net.au</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<div>[Not really APRS, but should be of interest anyway]</div>
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<div>I posted a week ago about flying from Sydney to Perth in a home built plane in order to visit a Fly In/Air Show in Langley Park on the Swan River in Perth. This is Perth's original airfield and was the strip for the Red Bull Air Race. Anyway, I am back
now after a week and probably 8000 km. The trip was basically Sydney-Broken Hill-Ceduna-Forrest-Caiguna-Esperence-Katanning-Serpentine (South Perth)-Jandakot-Serpentine-Rotnest Island-Serpentine-Langley Park-Kalgoorlie-Ceduna-Broken Hill-Bankstown. Flying
time was probably close to 30 hours. Much of the time we were flying at no more than 5,000 feet.</div>
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<div>I did not have an APRS HT with me, but did have the iPhone running OpenAPRS. I think I was beaconing at 2 minutes. Since I was using Telstra Next-G, coverage was amazing. Even in the middle of the Nullarbor, there was coverage. The main areas of lack of
coverage were some areas between Sydney and Broken Hill (Maybe up to 10 minutes of no coverage), and around the Caiguna Roadhouse half way between Esperence and the WA/SA border. There were also some coverage issues near Albany, but that might just be a software
issue.Coming back from Broken Hill I put the phone in the metal glove box so the GPS was poor :-(</div>
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<div>I really was blown away with coverage. Sure, I was not using ham radio, but it is still impressive. We were making calls in the plane, updating Facebook, posting photos, checking weather reports etc. The most bizarre was googling for the details of an
airstrip, and also emailing the photo of our takeoff from Langley Park from one plane to another a few Km ahead. </div>
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<div>What this means is that whilst you might not have coverage all the time on the ground doing a trip like ours, you should have Telstra mobile coverage if you either climb a hill or go a few KM in an emergency.</div>
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<div>For those who love playing with technology, check out the GoPro HD video cameras. These are small, self contained and are waterproof, and can record hours of high quality video and audio. We bought one in perth and screwed it to the wing with a single
screw. That has worked for air speeds in excess of 150 knots. The one issue is that on a plane they tend to fog up if you use the waterproof case. The vented case works really well. I have seen spectacular video of the trip into Langley. [Every pilot who sees
it spends the $350 for the camera let me tell you].</div>
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<div>Our video out was not as spectacular due to the position of the sun. From Ceduna to Broken Hill to Sydney we captured one image every 5 seconds and are going to turn this into a video showing the trip. [This is taking longer than expected as there are
about 4000 JPG's for just one leg]</div>
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<div>Darryl</div>
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<div style="font-family: Consolas; font-size: medium; ">Darryl Smith, VK2TDS POBox 169 Ingleburn NSW 2565 Australia</div>
<div style="font-family: Consolas; font-size: medium; ">Mobile Number 0412 929 634 [+61 4 12 929 634 Int] - 02 9618 6459</div>
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