Racing

You suggested 2 OGN receivers "N and S of the task area." What sort of reception range are you anticipating? Most of the SGP races I have seen (excepting Ionia) are in the (many) hundreds of kilometers, often in the mountains or other inhospitable terrain. Could be a problem in the western US.

I was thinking of Ionia, which is pretty flat (only place in the U.S. which shows interest in SGP that I'm aware of). In similar terrain (Eastern Ontario, Canada), we get pretty good coverage with 3 receivers. Look at http://ognrange.onglide.com/#,max,al...space;circles; you can see the coverage. Much comes from the CNF3a receiver, Hawkesbury and Kars receivers are new (we hope to put one to the NW in the hills of Quebec to cover out there). In the mountains, you can put the receiver on a mountain and gain LOS (many have antenna farms anyway). The CNF3a receiver is 30m up - on the top of our large hangar - and we see 100 km if the glider is high enough.

I see newish receivers in Minden and Colorado (maybe someone in the 94th FTS could put one on the hills thereabouts?), so you can watch the tracks from them and judge what you need. If ridge flying, you'll need a bunch (higher the antenna the fewer the receivers); if it's thermals and you're bumping class A, you won't need many receivers. I'm working on a mobile system which we'll take to Lake Placid wave camp; we expect good coverage of the lucky lads and lasses in the wave with a single receiver.

It cannot be any worse than a SPOT with a few missed messages!

Dan

Ionia will have one shortly.