..If you tune in after Dan has landed, take a look at the Google Map page that has the journey there, and back. Looks like this Google Maps flight tracker was a success. I'll ask that Dan posts some comments on this post to let us know how things went! :)For more real person, real time mashups, check this April 26th post..
1 comment:
Overall the flight was a success. It turns out we lost nearly a third of the position reports in transmission errors, but enough data made it through to create a pretty good depiction of the flight's progress. The data loss was only a problem at the end of the second flight, when the command to "close" the flight wasn't received. I'm considering adding some sort of acknowledgment to the system to account for this. Latency was excellent; the map was only 45 seconds behind the actual airplane.
I was amazed at how accurate the position data was. Zoom in on Eagle Creek (the departure airport on the first flight) and switch to satellite photos and you'll see three position reports. The first is our tie-down (it's like a parking space for airplanes), the second is on the run-up pad next to the runway (a place to finish preflight checks before takeoff), and the third depicts the beginning of the takeoff roll. All three are spot-on.
The utility of the system is questionable, especially since flights on IFR flight plans are already tracked by ATC and can be monitored at a wide variety of web sites. But it's definitely handy if someone is waiting for me at my destination, and above all it was fun to build!
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