First Operational Test of Delorme InReach with 1-minute Updates!!

Today Hawke Tracking and the U.S. Soaring Team made history by demonstrating the new Delorme InReach with 10x faster updates than our traditional SPOT trackers.  Bill Elliot (WE),  U.S team pilot in the 18-meter class, graciously agreed to fly with the InReach unit loaned to us by Steve Wells of Delorme.  Mark Hawkins got the unit late last week, and got its data integrated into our Hawke Tracking contest map, and then got it down to U.S. Team Captain Dennis Linnekin yesterday courtesy of Albuquerque Soaring Club members Billy Hill and Bob Hudson (former USAF Colonel and one-time guest of the infamous Hanoi Hilton).  Dennis got the unit to Bill Elliot, and Bill threw it into his glider (still working on photos of this).  Because Bill also carries a SPOT tracker, we were able to run an apples-to-apples performance comparison, and as expected, the InReach basically blew the SPOT tracker away.   Not only does it provide 10x more detailed position reporting, but it also reports GPS alitude, course, and speed.  Mark and I (and anyone else watching) could easily see when and where Bill stopped to climb, and could even get a rough estimate of his climb rate.  It was really cool to see Bill bombing along at 6000-7000′ msl at 200kph!

In case you are late to the party, Delorme’s InReach has been out for a year or so now.   During the prototype testing phase, there was some early indication that they would support 2-minute updates, but this was dropped in the final retail model.  Then, at the recently concluded Oshkosh EAA convention, Delorme demoed a unit with new firmware, allowing for update cycles down to 1 minute.  I happened to get wind of this through my AvWeb emag, and was able to talk Delorme’s Steve Wells into loaning us a unit to try at Uvalde.  Bill Elliot agreed to carry it as noted above, and so we were ‘in like Flynn’ ;-).

Mark and I took a whole bunch of screenshots from the Hawke Tracking site during the first half to two-thirds of the race to document the differences between WE (Bill’s normal SPOT tracker) and WEi (the Delorme InReach unit), and I have included them here as a Gallery Slideshow.  As you step through the slideshow, you will see WE and WEi start out together, and then separate as WEi’s 10x faster reporting moves it out ahead of WE.  There were times while we were watching that the WE and WEi icons were separated by as much as 30-35 miles.  With normal SPOT trackers, it is very difficult to determine if two gliders are actually together (like WE and P7), but with InReach trackers it would be trivial – just look at the map!

As I noted before, it appears at the moment like an InReach unit will be significantly more expensive (around USD 200-250 initially and about USD 300/year for full tracking coverage) as compared to our current SPOT devices (around USD 100 initially, and around USD 200/year for full tracking).  However, IMHO the 10x more rapid position reporting, coupled with GPS altitude, course, and speed reporting more than compensate for the added costs.

There are still a lot of details to be ironed out with Delorme regarding plan details and how best to get InReach data aggregated onto contest/club tracking maps, and we would dearly love to get the SSA involved so that SSA members don’t have to jump through a lot of difficult hoops to get their units ‘registered’ on the SSA site, and then subsequently onto appropriate contest/club aggregate tracking maps.

If you have comments, suggestions, ideas regarding the use of Delorme InReach vs SPOT devices, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Mark Hawkins.  You can reach us via our contact information at www.hawketracking.org.

In the screenshots below, look for ‘WE’ (SPOT) and ‘WEi’ (InReach).  Enjoy!

 

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