Naval Academy 2004 Ball Run
USNA Satellite Ground Station, Bob Bruninga, WB4APR
W3ADO Radio Club, Midn 1/c Trembula, Midn 1/c Humberd
See their page
13th Company Runners: At noon Friday, 3 Dec, 100 midshipmen from the 13th Company began running the Army/Navy game football 130 miles from Annapolis to the stadium in Philly. Channel 13 news quickly caught up to them at 1315 in Arnold and did a story. An hour was lost in downtown Baltimore around 1730 while the CHASE van was stuck in Annapolis traffic with replacement runners. But, on schedule, the Ball arrived in Philly and Navy trounced Army!
GPS Tracking: The Satellite Lab and USNA Radio Club, W3ADO, maintained comms with the runners using Amateur Radio, GPS and the same kind of amateur radio APRS technology used in the Academy's PCsat Satellite and on the International Space Station's Amateur Radio transponder . This is an annual event since 1983 (or so). See last year's Football 2003 event!
This map is the entire route from Annapolis to Philly. Look for FBALL and CHASE
shuttle vans. Although those
callsigns are off the air until next year, this map remains live for seeing all the other
tracking devices and stations in the area.
This map we keep zoomed-in to the vicinity of the football. Until next year we will
keep it focused on activity in the Annapolis area:
CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT BALL POSITION and Aerial Photo!
(This link is no longer live, so we captured the last map and aerial view we received)
These two links above are to the global Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS)and the FINDU data base maintained entirely by Amateur Radio Operators. We can track over 27,000 ham radio operators worldwide. All you need to know is their callsign and they must have a GPS connected to their HAM radio and these links can find them. The aerial photos are from the USGS Database and the web page overlays the GPS coordinates on them.
ENROUTE This photo was from 2001 as they headed up route 2.
..
The above street maps only show the Football position. The following map ran javAPRS live and showed all amateur radio APRS stations participating or in the vicinity of the Football and Shuttle vehicles. Now this map is running a replay of the 2001 event.
| zooms up/down (you may also use PGup/dn) | |
| List stations, Show Status or Messages to Java console | |
| Centers or Zooms map on clicked location | |
| scrolls map |
The Remainder of this page is not being used this year (2003)
Remote Amateur Radio Ken-Cam LIVE Images (2002):
The following section was updated in real time* via amateur radio link whenever new images were received from the lead vehicle. Most images were taken by the handheld Ken-Cam during changes in runners at each of the legs. (Also, see 1998's Photos). 1999's Photos). Here are the new photos as they came in via HAM radio:.
These images are transmitted back live via Amateur radio using what is called SSTV, Slow Scan TV. HAMS have been doing this for over 30 years, but now with WEB technology, we can instantly post these live images to our WEB page too...
APRN BACKGROUND: APRN (Automatic Picture Relay Network) is a live amateur radio channel for the transmission of remote KEN-CAM images. We can even automatically place the station on the map if he uses an attached GPS unit. Thus this APRN web page is automatic and catalogs, indexes and makes available images instantly. There is no better mechanism than APRN for diseminating real-time, in-the-field images from amateur radio operators in support of emergencies or public service events. APRN augments the worldwide APRS amateur radio position reporting and mesaging system by giving vision to remote and mobile operations.
APRN is a concept presented by Bob Bruninga, WB4APR at the Digital Communication Conference in Chicago, 25 September 1998 and his robotic VISION system presented at the DCC in Baltimore, Sept 1997.
Here is also a replay of the 1993 Army-Navy game football run to NJ Meadowlands(picture)
| SAT-STATION | APRN Annapolis |
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