SSA sailplane tracker - too complex

On Monday, July 25, 2016 at 8:18:35 AM UTC-6, Papa3 wrote:
On Saturday, July 23, 2016 at 3:50:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Can someone explain how you are supposed to use the SSA sailplane tracker?
It seems way overly complex. You should have the option just to zoom and pan to an area of interest and see all the live tracks.

thanks
Chris

Typical of R.A.S. this thread has partly gone off the rails. There are two "legitimate" complaints arising.

1. Platform: The tracker throws an error message when I try to use it on my Android devices (a Kindle running Chrome and my Galaxy S6 also running Chrome). "Oops! Mobile GlidePort cannot run embedded in an iFrame" However, it does display a hyperlink to "Run un-embedded" and that works. It's a mild annoyance, but it's not a show stopper on Android/Chrome. Maybe worse on iOS?

2. UI: As pointed out, it's impossible to find an individual pilot unless you know where they launched (or where GP thinks they launched). You have to drill down from the site to get a list of tracks (leaving out competitions). That's not a big problem for someone like me who usually knows who I'm looking for and where they launched. But it's probably not very user friendly for John Q. Public who might stumble on this site.. "Hey, I know Erik flies gliders, I wonder if he's up today?"

NB: The 911 feature on the SSA Website does let you find an individual pilot by name or contest number. It relies on the pilot to have correctly linked to their individual tracker. In my case, it links to the Delorme page, which has some quirks of its own in terms of easily finding the latest position.

So, I'd fall into the camp of "mildly annoyed" but certainly not "outraged" :-)

P3

Did you try the "Search" button at the top left of the screen? Right next to the "Map" button. Allows search by name or ID. You don't even have to know the day of the track.

ZL