Where are we NOW?

As we have become mobile again, and know people who are also mobile, it has become increasingly important for people to know where we actually are right now in case they want to meet up with us, as opposed to our blog which is usually a few weeks behind. We've started using our SSB radio to send position reports via Winlink. There is also Yotreps, and both Winlink and Yotreps feed to Shiptrak, making Shiptrak a cool site to use if you want to find someone because you don't have to know how they are reporting, just what callsign they are using.

Why Winlink? Well, we're Amateur Radio Operators so we can and also, there is a cool feature where if you are reporting your position via Winlink, other HAMs can request your position via radio (with Airmail it's easy) and thus a friend can be bobbing around in an anchorage and say "Where's Estrellita?" and then send a request with their radio and get our most recent latitude-longitude*.

Non-boaters, indeed, non-radio geeks - The important fact here is that, you can now see where we are, or at least where we were recently, on this map (best visually, IMHO): WINLINK

Or this map: SHIPTRACK 

Not this map yet, but maybe at sea: YOTREPS

*I have this (totally stupid) stance about saying latitude-longitude instead of "GPS position". GPS is one way (the best way, granted) to get a lat-long but it is a mechanism for discovery not the data point.

2 comments:

  1. Good info, but one needs the call sign to use shiptrack.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good point Al, I added that. And if someone isn't a HAM, you would only know their callsign if you are in contact with them already.

    ReplyDelete

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