Musings on Flarm, GlidePort & SeeYou Navigator

[Colin Barry]

Pedja’s brilliant glideport.aero site relied on you registering and carrying a Spot or inReach. You could also carry a cell device with custom tracking software installed. The glideport site provides an excellent visualization of the tracking data it receives but it currently does not show Flarm signals, ADSB or OGN data. AFAIK glideport.aero is not under active development.

The undocumented(?) SeeYou Navigator tracking feature, complimented by an OGN receiver network may provide a route forward.

After installing Navigator on your mobile device, you will be transmitting your location (lat, long & alt) via any cell data networks within range to the master OGN database. If you are equipped with a Flarm your data will also go into the master OGN database via any OGN receivers within range.

Consider the following scenarios:

In the cockpit.

Provided you have a cell signal, If you turn on the OGN layer on your mobile device you will see Flarm targets, including those that are out of range via OGN receivers. You will also see targets that are only carrying a mobile device. As a side note... I have found the range of Flarm devices to be spotty, for both a send and receive, being highly sensitive to the placement of the antennas. Trig ADSB equipped aircraft certainly reduced this problem.

At a gliding event or home.

Using OGN visualization web sites (e.g. https://www.gliderradar.com/center/46.27626,2.26936/zoom/11/time/15?center=40.0024,-105.0073&zoom=8 ), which are polling the master OGN database, You will now see Flarm (via OGN receivers) and Navigator data (via cell)

The need and expense of carrying a satellite tracker is now diminished, except for there need in a situation where you are off the grid. BTW Spot trackers only update every 10 minutes so they could be as laggy as moving in and out of cell range

I am not saying Navigator/OGN is perfect but it seems to be a way forward that can be actively pursued.
We are lucky in Colorado that the major clubs have each installed OGN receivers. It’s about $300, should your club be considering this?

[Raul Boerner]

Hello Colin,

First, thank you for yesterday's post which includes the link to the "OGN Devices DataBase website": https://ddb.glidernet.org/

My PowerFlarm has been registered with this database for a few months. Now, my Oudie N is also registered. My cellphone was registered but too many devices seems confusing, so I deleted that one. This is my question: Will registering and using multiple devices clutter the various OGN visualization websites (maps)?

Thank you for bringing up OGN,

Raul Boerner

[Martin Gregorie]

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 13:10:45 -0700 (PDT), Colin Barry wrote:

> As a side note... I have found the range of
> Flarm devices to be spotty, for both a send and receive, being highly
> sensitive to the placement of the antennas. Trig ADSB equipped aircraft
> certainly reduced this problem.
>

Have you optimised your FLARM antenna placement? The necessity of doing
that is something I've known since I first installed FLARM 15 years ago.

I've also known the fix for just as long: submit a FLARM log which has
several contacts on it to the FLARM range analyser. This displays a chart
showing your contact range in all directions from your glider. If the
plot isn't approximately circular, adjust your antenna placement until it
is. thats fairly easy to do: I'd adjusted my antenna position to get a
similar omnidirectional contact range within the first few weeks of
installing FLARM.

[Colin Barry]

Hello Raul,
Yes multiple device registrations could get messy IMHO. It would be better implementation if you had one top level record for each aircraft which specified Registration ID, Contest Number etc then one or more child records for each device (Ahh back in my DBA days..). But more use of the system may trigger such changes.

Cheers

Colin

[Colin Barry]

Hello Martin,
Yes, I really worked hard on my antennae placement and tuning. My previous glider was a Discus2b and the carbon fiber body made this very challenging and frustrating.

In any case I am just suggesting that the OGN route may be a better avenue for us to pursue. Flarm data is not available on the unsupported glideport.aero but is available in various OGN visualizers.

If you would like to start another thread on Flarm antennae tuning … please go ahead as I don’t want this thread to be hi-jacked into a black hole related to this task :). I would note that the tuning topic has been beaten to death in prior rec.aviation.soaring history.

Cheers

Colin

[Martin Gregorie]

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 15:56:41 -0700 (PDT), Colin Barry wrote:

> If you would like to start another thread on Flarm antennae tuning …
> please go ahead as I don’t want this thread to be hi-jacked into a black
> hole related to this task :). I would note that the tuning topic has
> been beaten to death in prior rec.aviation.soaring history.
>

Hi Colin,

The only glider type I'd claim any FLARM antenna placement knowledge for
is an H.201 Libelle - and that is for a single antenna Red Box FLARM, i.e.
not a PowerFLARM. Following advice from a Swedish pilot, I mounted my
antenna in front of the instrument tray on a length of glass fishing rod
using a wooden block and nylon screws so the antenna that can be moved
fore and aft along the rod.

The antenna needs to be placed roughly halfway between the front of the
tray and the pedals. Its exact placement is critical: if done right you
get good all-round coverage, but if wrong you have virtually no rearward
coverage. I assume this is some sort of interference effect from the
(metal) instruments on the panel and in the tray because adjusting the
antenna placement by as little as 10mm makes a significant difference to
rear coverage.

[Charles Gillespie]

I agree that having Navigator and FLARM simultaneously reporting your position to OGN will result in unnecessary clutter. Unfortunately, de-selecting the OGN layer in Navigator does not cease the reporting of the device position to OGN. I wonder if Naviter could couple position reporting to the OGN layer switch?

[kinsell]

On 4/7/22 08:26, Charles Gillespie wrote:

>
> I agree that having Navigator and FLARM simultaneously reporting your position to OGN will result in unnecessary clutter. Unfortunately, de-selecting the OGN layer in Navigator does not cease the reporting of the device position to OGN. I wonder if Naviter could couple position reporting to the OGN layer switch?

Seems like the implementation in Navigator is poorly thought out. It's
too easy for your cell phone to be accidentally broadcasting your
position at all times, leading to clutter on OGN, privacy issues, and
wasted cell data. When I first noticed Colin's signal, it looked like
we had another glider down on a golf course.

[Colin Barry]

Located some more documentation on SeeYou Navigator

https://naviter.com/2022/02/navigator-2-3-0-with-loads-of-new-functionality/

https://kb.naviter.com/en/article-categories/seeyou-navigator/

Also I completed a support request regarding "clutter" and "always on". Maybe Andrej is listening here?

[Colin Barry]

Maybe I should RTFM regarding 'always on'

https://kb.naviter.com/en/kb/keep-seeyou-navigator-running-in-the-background/

Still a bit clunky IMHO

[kinsell]

No matter how much documentation exists, people will leave tracking on
accidentally sometimes.

Happened to notice three targets at your house this morning. Your
glider, your cell, and some other Naviter device, with a fake Flarm ID
ending in "BF". Did you have a visitor, or is there some other device
putting out data?

[Ramy]

One correction: you can relay your OGN data to glideport using the following service courtesy of Niv Levi and PASCO. See instructions in 2nd and 3rd slide:

https://www.pacificsoaring.org/articles/2020/using-ogn/using-ogn.html

Also note that If you have ADSB it is now relayed to OGN, and if you sign up for the service above, also to glideport.
You can see this in action on my glideport traces (TG).

Ramy

[Colin Barry]

Dave,
agreed it's too easy to have the tracking data enabled and not obvious when it is. The 3 devices was me just testing the maximum clutter. I was running my iPad, iPhone & FLARM core

Cheers

Colin

[Colin Barry]

Hi Ramy,
thanks for the heads up. I will check it out.

Cheers

Colin

[kinsell]

There's been little flying in Colorado this last week due to winds, but
there's some interesting patterns showing up at Colorado Springs:

https://www.gliderradar.com/?center=39.3407,-104.5404&zoom=8

Select the bottom receiver, and hit coverage. There's some paths from
Col Springs up to Denver, and one to Canon City. I'm betting that's car
traffic, probably accidentally with tracking on?

Dave