Whitewater Jetboat Racing

Hi!
My son-in-law, daughter and I will be at the Worlds this year and wanted to know if any of the boats will be using the GPS trackers. When we were at Riggins last year, Gordon Humphrey and his jet made very little noise on the course and was the first to come by. We were almost trampled by people suddenly realizing a jet boat was going by and they were missing it!
If they are being used, what equipment and software do I need to monitor them from a laptop? How far down range can I monitor their progress?

Thanks for the info...

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Supporting small towns and the racing community, instead of multinational conglomerates.
Building a race boat? Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.

At this point, we don't intend to have trackers on the boats this year. If those plans change, however, the equipment that would be needed beyond the laptop is a radio or scanner capable of receiving amateur radio VHF frequencies, a radio modem - also called a TNC (terminal node controller) to decode the data stream, and APRS (automatic packet reporting system) software to do the decoding. As far as range is concerned, there are a number of factors that come into play such as transmitter power, antenna, and if there's a data repeater system in place. When we run the trackers at Riggins, there is just such a repeater system that allows seamless monitoring from one end of the race course to the other.

Not to hijack this thread, but are there any plans to have live cameras or other tech in the area instead of the gps trackers?

Not that I'm aware of...

Thanks radioguy for the timely reply.
I found your digipeater COLDSP and I assume this is what you were talking about. Now I have some figuring to do...Hummm.

_________________
Supporting small towns and the racing community, instead of multinational conglomerates.
Building a race boat? Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.

The coldsprings digipeater runs on the national APRS frequency of 144.39. When we run the trackers, they are on 145.05. The reason for this is that the beacon rate is set for every five seconds and anything beaconing any more frequent than 30 second intervals gets automatically locked out of the I-Gate servers. So what I've done in the past is run a digipeater on 145.05. If we were have the trackers beacon at 30 second intervals, some of the boats would be traveling more than a mile between beacons.

Sooo... there won't be ANY type of local news, ESPN or anything else on TV or cable? Highlights or clips???? Racer interviews or color commentary? I'm sure Riggins wouldn't mind the big news vans and their satellite dishes popping up everywhere. And some news people complain (not publicly) about a slow news day...

_________________
Supporting small towns and the racing community, instead of multinational conglomerates.
Building a race boat? Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.

GPS tracking systems have nothing to do with media coverage. They are amateur (ham) radio systems that have been used in Riggins. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see all kinds of media presence at the various venues.

??? Oh! Heh... What I was referring to was Zhorntixs' question and your answer that no live cameras will be there. I was guessing Zhorns' question was tied to the news media. With an event like this, I was quite suprised that it would be overlooked by the news. Then you mentioned that you wouldn't be suprised if all kinds of outlets showed up.
Guess I should have prefaced my reply first. LOL

_________________
Supporting small towns and the racing community, instead of multinational conglomerates.
Building a race boat? Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.

Because the door was opened with the comments about media coverage, I have a question as well: Are there going to be any Facebook groups or Twitter feeds to follow regarding the racers and races? Forums are all fine and dandy, I suppose. However, it would be great to have something ping my smartphone whenever someone messages on it, like a Facebook group or a Twitter feed I would be following. I am doing Google searches and finding absolutely nothing on the jet boat racing except for this site. Does anybody know anything about either of these options?

Well, we posted about the Facebook page last fall-see page 2 of this topic-(RadioGuy posted the link up):

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1156&start=15

and the direct link to the Facebook page is:

http://www.facebook.com/2012USA.WORLDJETBOATMARATHON

You might also try "googling" :

2012 Toyota Weaver Seed World Jet Boat Marathon -----that returns over 5500 hits--there may be something there that will link you to one of the social media.

I am not a user of either of the time vampires- Facebook or Twitter -but from what I understand from the information given to me at the Logistics Meetings there are several folk that are beating those drums.

As per media and cameras and etc and etc. Most of the rivers we will be racing on have very poor cell phone coverage, let alone any form of high tech linkage. Some are in deep river canyons where the only possibility of a link to the outside world is a satellite briefly passing overhead. (that is the reason we rely on Amateur Radio (Hams) for a communication link.) Once all the legs for a day are over, it can sometimes take over an hour for the timers and scorers to just get back to even start compiling the results.

As for instantaneous posting of info, someone who is there may periodically get something up, but the OFFICIAL times, places and etc will take a large bit of time to assemble, correlate, check and get posted. It will be quite late at night each day before that information is compiled and released. To try and get it posted up somewhere will also take getting to somewhere with an internet connection. We will see how each day goes, but there is quite a lot for our volunteer corp to do to just get the race done each day and get a little sleep before it starts all over again. Our primary task will be to take care of the folks on site first. We will have to implore those of you that are anxious for "news" to be patient with us (or HEY! you could come and get the info first hand!! yea, yea, that's it....) We will do the best we can, but many of us will be wearing many hats, and disseminating info to the "outside" world will take place after the essentials are completed so we can go racing again "tomorrow".

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faster, Faster, FASTER until the THRILL of speed overcomes the FEAR of DEATH!!
Boat #163 "Tuff n' Nuff"

To the powers that be
I am hesitant to ask, (because I've seen no posts on the subject, but hope springs eternal ) but
1. will there be any transponders for this race (Riggins 2013) ? I see the same problem as last year when running the turbins: NO HEADS UP! Sort of a pain to get the camera ready when the guy is upon you. Yeah, Yeah, depend on the guy around the bend to yell when a 120 MPH turbine is rounding the corner. OK then, how about this,
2. instead of having each computer running decoding software and other equipment to see where each boat with a transponder is, how about posting it, oh, like on this website, so it can be viewed World Wide, and not just at the location? Guys down here say it's doable. Just need the towers.
This way anybody who has internet access can see where the boats are at any one time.

Oh, and in case anyone thinks I don't know how much work a volunteer does, read my latest blog on the other post. Trust me, I would rather volunteer my time off from work to set this race up, than spend that time driving about 1200 miles.

Mag

_________________
Supporting small towns and the racing community, instead of multinational conglomerates.
Building a race boat? Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.