I planned to give Sports Tracker a try on my off-road motorcycle by placing my N95 in the pocket of my hydration pack, but before I got a chance to do that, a more interesting opportunity arose...
 Whilst on holiday in Jo'burg, I decided to try it out in my brother Gareth's model aeroplane. He has a Funtana S40 3D aerobatic radio controlled aircraft. |
 I created an activity named "Flying" in Sports Tracker with the settings I required and got it up and running, ensuring that the GPS had lock. I set the phone to use the "Offline" profile to avoid unwanted RF interference. |
 Next we placed the phone in a bubble-wrap envelope inside the fuselage of the aircraft. Unfortunately I had to close the phone's slide due to space constraints. |
 Then we closed her up carefully. I threatened Gareth with his life fearing the potential demise of my beloved N95 (when a radio controlled aircraft crashes, there is usually nothing but toothpicks left over). He gave me the usual "There are no guarantees" speech. |
 Finally Gareth took her for a hair raising, high speed, high G flight. When he landed after about 15 minutes of redical manoeuvres, I said a prayer of thanks that my phone had made it unscathed and we eagerly opened her up to review the results. |
 Sadly, Sports Tracker only recorded the first minute or so of flying. I think the GPS lost lock during the first aerobatic manoeuvre and was unable to re-acquire it because of the high speed and rapid acceleration. Having the phone's slide closed probably also inhibited the GPS's performance.BUT we still managed to get just under 1km of track recorded and clocked the Funtana at 120km/h straight and level (about 840km/h scale speed) - not bad. We wanted to give it another go but ran out of time. Perhaps some other time... Boys and their toys - all in the spirit of fun I say! |
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