Chalkie’s Progress
Well the Chalk dust has settled. Yes, Chalkie Stobbart broke Alex Henshaw’s 70-year old record for a round trip solo flight between Cape Town and London in a single-engine aircraft. He broke the record of 4 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes in 3 days, 15 hours, 17 minutes.
Chalkie Stobbart back in Cape Town
If, like me, you were one of the 11,000-plus people who followed Chalkie Stobbart’s flight virtually in real-time on the site www.followchalkie.co.za you will be interested in knowing how this tracking site came about, how it works and who was behind it. So I tracked down Henshaw Challenge team member Tim Jackson, the originator and technologist behind this site:
Q: How did you get involved in this project?
A: It was largely by chance really that I stumbled across it. On the morning of Friday 1 May, I heard Chalkie Stobbart being interviewed on 702 by Chris Gibbons. Prior to that I had no knowledge of the event itself and didn’t know any of the people Involved. When Chris Gibbons asked Chalkie if there was a website people could visit to find out more about the event and to follow Chalkie’s progress during the flight live on the Internet Chalkie explained that, while they had tried to find somebody to do this, no one had been able to get it right.
Having just heard Chalkie explain the mission, I felt frustrated that no one would be able to follow his progress. I wanted to follow his progress!
Q: What made you think you could do it?
A: My business is in the field of electronics and I have some experience with ground-based tracking systems. My wife is in the business of advanced Web design and has previously developed a system for a private air charter company
which included a tracking system. I knew that between the two of us we could do it. It was just time, or rather the lack of it, that was the enemy.
Q: You must have been pretty confident in doing it in so little time. You could have wasted a whole lot of time and effort by not getting it ready in time?
A: Yes, it certainly was a risk, and we could have wound up with egg on our face and, as it turned out, it was a lot more work than we anticipated but with a combination of stubbornness, determination and very little sleep we managed to get it right. It was a bit like jumping out of an aeroplane with only a silkworm and a sewing machine – we simply had to make it work.
Q: So Tim, how exactly does the plane’s position get displayed on a Google Earth image on my computer a few minutes later?
A: Most people are familiar with the small GPS units that many of us have in our cars these days. We are also all familiar with the concept of sending and receiving SMS messages on our cell phones. Essentially the GPS receiver in the tracking unit in the plane regularly sends out a small data message, similar to an SMS, but using a satellite telephone network which covers the entire globe, unlike the cellular network used for sending SMS messages, which only works in fairly small patches. These regularly sent messages, containing information about the aircraft’s location, speed etc arrive on our server where they are processed by our software which draws the waypoints and an interconnecting line as an overlay on a Google Earth image, which our server then makes available in the form of a web page for people
anywhere in the world to view. As new data comes in every few minutes, the image is updated automatically.
Q: I heard you were using the same equipment they use for tracking elephants. Did that present any challenges?
A: When I first heard that radio interview, there were just five days left before everything had to be ready. Arranging to install one of our own tracking units in Chalkie’s plane was, logistically, almost impossible. As it turned out, however, there was an existing tracking unit that had been installed in Chalkie’s plane on a test basis prior to our becoming involved. This tracking unit had been developed for the purpose of tracking elephants and was an experimental prototype still some way away from being ready for production. We decided, however, that this was probably our best option, given the time constraints, and decided to go with it, even though the unit would not send us certain useful information for aircraft tracking such as altitude and heading.
Q: I tracked Chalkie during his flight and was very impressed with the site. But I noticed the odd hiccup like when Chalkie seemed to have turned back?
A: Yes, there were a few of those. The one you refer to occurred on the northbound leg of Chalkie’s trip as he crossed the equator. The tracking unit had not been designed for global tracking and the designers hadn’t thought to include the ability to deal with any location in the northern hemisphere. As a result, as Chalkie crossed the equator, the tracking unit started sending incorrect data. Fortunately we anticipated that this might happen and were sitting watching the data at the time and were able to add a few extra lines of code to our system to correct the erroneous data. This didn’t stop several people having a heart stopping moment when, for five minutes or so, it looked like Chalkie had turned back.
Q: What would you do differently if you got another crack at it?
A: Where do I start! We have so many ideas for improvements to the system – things we are now able to do seeing as we have time to plan and develop. If Chalkie’s mission was the beginning and end of our tracking system it would be a great pity but, fortunately, we have already been contacted by numerous people asking us if we would be willing to do the tracking for various other events and so we have taken the decision to develop our system further into something a lot more comprehensive.
Q: Did you manage to meet Chalkie?
A: Yes, and what an honour it was. At the 11th hour, on the morning of the day Chalkie arrived home, I received two phone calls: one from one of the guys on Chalkie’s team and another from Chalkie’s wife, both inviting us to go down to Cape Town immediately and be part of the welcoming committee. We jumped at the opportunity and it was a mad scramble to arrange a flight and get there in time and we managed to make it just five minutes before Chalkie landed. It was an awesome experience. Definitely one of those once-in-a-lifetime events.
Q: Fantastic. Thanks so much Tim and congratulations on a job so well done.
A: My pleasure.
Tim Jackson with his wife Jules and daughter Molly posing with Chalkie’s plane
You can contact Tim Jackson on tj@md.co.za
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