Where Am I???
Well, I am back in Las Vegas. For roughly 600 miles the tracker worked beautifully. Unfortunately, due to some poor last-minute wiring by me failed.
What happened? Well, I failed to take into account the vibrations on a motorcycle's chassis. It takes very little to wear a hole in a wire's insulation when it is riding against a buzzing piece of Aluminum. A hole was worn through and causing periodic shorts to ground that were not long enough to blow a fuse, but long enough to turn off the GPS.
Next time, i will DEFINITELY pay more attention to the wiring!
Thanks, N2OBS!
A special thanks goes out to Keith, N2OBS for making this possible. He was kind enough to lend me some equipment that will track my position.
How Does This Work?
This uses a set of technologies to bring you my current position. My location is determined using a small GPS receiver afixed to my motorcycle. The receiver is atteched to an Amateur Radio that encodes the GPS location and sends it to other Amateur Radio stations that in turn relay it to other stations or to a database on the internet. Then, that database is merged with Google Maps and there you have it! My current location!
What is Amateur Radio? Here is a great definition from wikipedia:
Amateur radio, often called ham radio, is both a hobby and a service in which participants, called "hams," use various types of radio communications equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs for public service, recreation and self-training.
Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary, while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory. An estimated six million people throughout the world are regularly involved with amateur radio.
My Callsign is KC7RAD and I have been licensed since 1983 when I had the call KA9RVK. If you would like to learn more about amateur radio, browse to the Amateur Radio Relay League website.
