Clipper Round World Race 07-08 www.clipper-ventures.com - Übersicht 15 September 2007 Track the Clipper fleet around the world Clipper Race Director, Joff Bailey, has been working hard with the boffins to develop a race tracker for the new Clipper website. Here he explains exactly how it works. Don’t worry – even the non-technically minded will be able to follow it… With the Race start less than 24 hours away the crew are in Liverpool raring to go and the excitement is really building. However, once the fleet has departed the Mersey River on Sunday and all the crowds melt away, how do friends, family and supporters follow the progress of loved ones as they battle across the oceans? The answer to this lies in a small black box (which is actually white) fitted to each boat, a series of satellites and the Clipper web site - clipperroundtheworld.com. The ‘little black box’, provided by Marine Track, a company with many years of experience in this area, contains a GPS system and a satellite transmitter. Four times a day the ‘little black box’ will poll the boat’s position and fire off an email back to Clipper Race HQ. The email will contain the position, instantaneous speed and course of each yacht within the fleet. This data is then displayed on the official Clipper Race Tracker on the website. The information will be displayed in tabular form and also in graphical form, based on Google Earth. The information will be updated each day by 0600, 1200, 1800 and 0000 UTC. This means that all the race followers will be able watch the excitement build as the race develops and see the tactics that each team is following. I do want to mention though that, very occasionally, a boat may miss its six-hourly poll. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that something terrible has happened to the boats! This will be due to a variety of reasons including atmospheric conditions or even something as simple as a seagull sitting on the antenna! The Clipper Race Office can contact them and can correct the information manually, or alternatively, six hours later the next poll will correct the position automatically. Because of this, at 0600 and 1800 the fleet holds a radio schedule between all ten boats to verify their positions and these will be the official boat schedules; the 1200 and 0000 will be provisional. Let the racing begin! 1. jon, liverpool 16 September 2007 windy start Copyright © 1996-2016 - SEGEL.DE