disclaimer:  I am part owner of Hawke Tracking LLC, and have every intention of financing my next glider (winglet) purchase from my half of the profits! ;-).

Mark Hawkins, the genius behind Hawke Tracking, has made some major improvements to the Uvalde WGC SPOT tracking site.  First, we purchased and installed a complete, independent server dedicated to SPOT tracking for the Uvalde WGC.  Second, Mark has been in contact with SPOT technical personnel, and recently switched both our SPOT tracking servers to a newer, more responsive API (Application Programming Interface). With the new API, there is much less delay between the time a SPOT position report hits a particular SPOT shared page to the time it shows up on our SPOT tracking map.  Now watching the SPOT map is much more informative and entertaining, as it is much easier to see who is flying with who, and what groups are breaking away from the main pack.

In addition, Mark figured out (literally overnight) how to display start lines instead of start circles, so now we have a better looking display.

Too bad the WGC organizers didn’t require SPOT trackers for all competitors, as it would be even more entertaining if the entire fleet was ‘on the map’ each day ;-).  As it is, there are approximately 35 SPOTs being tracked (about 1/3 of the field)

The Uvalde WGC SPOT  tracking maps (several different sizes for different devices and one for Google Earth) are available at http://www.hawketracking.com/events.html

Frank