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SPOT Trackers in the English Channel

first of all — all of the people trying tyo e-mail Angrela and me for information and relpies -we are out of the office until next Monday.

Reference “Spot trackers” for tracking Channel swims and crossing.

3 of the escort boats – Anastasia – Sea`Satin & Gallivant – have had trackers onboard and working for ther past year. They are up and running on

www.ais-doversstraits.co.uk

You just need to click on the boats name to see the course. You can also print the course from thie site.

We have an additional 3 Spot trackers in the office but as of yet they have not been commisioned for use.

The trackers are around the £150 to buy.

The yearly subscription to the site that does the tracking is another £150 approximately (all priced in Euros).

When working the system is designed to update the GPS position every 10 minutes (but it does miss a few plots every now and then).

The transmitter is a self contained unit that runs on 2 aa lithiam batteries and just needs a clear view of the sky

They are waterproof / showerproof

We have considered making the 3 spare units available to swimmers but as of yet we have not sorted a price or a system for distribution among the boats. Last year their was very little demand from swimmers hence the use of the trackers on our and Eddie’s escort boats – for free to our swimmers.

There is a basic tracking site that comes with the purchase of a s.ystem that will allow you to see the track We have commossioned our own site for our trackers and for tracking the AIS signals from the escort boats. Unfortunately AIS the singnal is lost mid Channel.

Again we have looked into setting up an AIS base station within the Dover Straitsarea imediateto Dover but time and effort, plus the need to finance it has held up the progression of this sourse.

. On Thu, 24/6/10, Rob Kent (Canada) wrote:

From: Rob Kent (Canada)

Subject: [Channel Group] Re: Tracking of Swim LIVE

To: “Channel Swimmers”

Date: Thursday, 24 June, 2010, 14:40

I looked into the SPOT, but from what I gathered, you had to buy it,

which wasn’t too expensive, but then you had to buy a 1 year service

plan, kind of like a cell phone plan, which made it useless for a one-

off swim. The ideal thing would be if the pilots bought one and

rented it out to swimmers… the pilots could make money from it and

it would still be cheaper for the swimmer. Just a thought.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jun 24, 3:39 am, “jboucher.e…@googlemail.com”

wrote:

> Having one of your support crew text a gps position from the boat

> every hour to someone at a Google-earth equipped PC is the poor man’s

> approach. You get a lot of points plotted with these automatic tracker

> units and I dont think they add that much over something a bit more

> rudimentary

>

> J

>

> On 23 June, 23:00, John wrote:

>

>

>

> > Steffan –

>

> > Check out this link:http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=05LWfR35u…

>

> > It is from the most recent relay swim posted on the message board.

> > Apparently, you will need to purchase a “Spot” personal GPS device. I

> > was very intrigued by the “real time” plot and followed the relay swim

> > as it progressed. I’m likely going to look into the “Spot” device as

> > my longer open water swims and definitely prior to my Channel attempt

> > in 2013.

>

> > John

>

> > On Jun 23, 3:49 pm, “Steffan Sarkin”

> > wrote:

>

> > > Swimmers doing MIMS could be tracked live as they swam the route. Does

> > > anyone know if there are websites that can facilitate individual

> > > activities to be tracked and viewed in real time so that interested

> > > parties can view progress.

>

> > > Steffan- Hide quoted text –

>

> > – Show quoted text — Hide quoted text –

>

> – Show quoted text –



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Copyright © 2010 by Steven Munatones

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