Cloud Base addict

3 days of flying and probably 7 hours of time trying these out and here’s the observations so far.

These radio’s transmit their GPS waypoints every time you push the PTT button.  There’s also another button that just sends the current GPS location without engaging the microphone.  Either way works the same.  Here’s the real cool thing…  One unit can “poll” the other unit which means that a driver can just “poll” me and find out my whereabouts without my ever having to reach for the Rino that I’m flying with. 

The reason I like that is that I’ve mounted my Rino in a LOW drag spot behind my elbow, and while I can reach the button’s fine, it’s nice to NOT have to put another draggy thing on my control frame.

The results have been good so far.  My Dad (driver) has been able to poll me and get the resulting coordinates 90% of the time.  I say that because when I was 9-10 miles away from him yesterday some of his poll requests didn’t work out.  Still though, 90% is good.  Also, when I reach back and hit the “send coordinates” button, he’s gotten my coordinates every time.  I believe that will be what I need to do as I get farther away since I’m up high, I’ll be able to send my signal out LONG distances where as I can’t see his signal from the ground as easy.  He was also inside my truck when the polls didn’t come back.  We’re pretty happy with them.  Each time my coordinates refresh in his unit, whether he polls me, or I send it out to him, it puts a smiley guy with a baseball hat on my latest waypoint and updates his “goto” to take him there.  It also keeps my previous locations on his map as a little tracklog so he can see my progress.

Pretty cool..  The big tests will be open distance which we’ll have to wait for the right day.  Today is turning into another triangle attempt day.  Going to set up a reasonable 100km triangle.  The wind is strong(15-20) SSE below 2kft and on the ground, but supposed to be very light up above.  So if I can get high but make my final leg downwind and low, I think I could get a 3rd triangle record.  We shall see. 

Happy flyin