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Hi

As many people, we have been using GPS on base (both for WS and regular track) for a while on the crew. As GPS data manipulation is kind of tricky, I wrote some small scripts in perl, to recalibrate GPS tracks and make 3d models of antennas, to be displayed in a 3 d viewer like Google Earth. Maybe the attached pics explain better. The idea is to view the actual trajectories in 3d with a representation of the tower and wire guys. As the scripts work smooth, I give them here in the hope in may be useful to someone.

Peace

Gee


PS1: for the attached pics, the track data is real, but as the purpose of this post is NOT to burn an object, the whole data is shifted (and rotated) far away from the original location in another country, to make it impossible to recognize the original object.

PS2: I use a Garmin Foretrex 201 (without pressure sensor), usually helmet mounted (sometimes on the wrist), and enable WAAS correction. The quality of the GPS fix, prior exit, proved very important (at least 10mn). I download the data on the computer using GPS utility, and save it in GPX format, since this format is easy to edit manually, and can be directly imported in the free version of Google Earth 4 (you just need to change the altitude as absolute, to avoid having the data clamped to the ground).

Well done! The Camel continues to march forward bringing happiness and joy to the world. Nicely done. Always great to see another perlmonger on the boards ;-)

Great post!

Very informative, Larry would be proud!

From the looks of the WS data, you guys are dirty-low pullers!

YEAH!

I think this tool is a great asset to the progression of flight characteristics from different objects, conditions, altitudes, and equipment/ wingsuits/ track suits. To be able to correlate google earth and this little wrist mount GPS unit through software specifically created for this purpose is something that is not only a great learning tool, but very fun to play with as well.

I am one of the jumpers on these pics. I used this little tool on only a couple of jumps, and learned that from a certain terminal altitude, under similar wind conditions that I can increase my distance of track by diving on my first four seconds of decent rather than going flat and stable into my track. The pull altitude was the same within a few feet, but my track distance increased by more than 100 feet.

With this tool, it is only obvious that I can chart out my flight characteristics down to pin point accuracy and improve my performance drastically.

Has anyone else experimented with this technique?
If so, has it helped your performance?
Any new ideas or input is greatly appreciated.

dave