https://ozreport.com/23.190.2

I do not recall how I found out about this issue. Jamie Shelden, the meet
director and organizer probably told me about it. I received what I thought was
Jonny Durand's Flymaster tracker track log in the morning on Friday the 20th for
the task on Wednesday the 18th. I didn't look at the file using Notepad
but rather displayed it on SeeYou and subsequently published the screen captures
showing the difference between it and his 6030 the track log. If I had looked at
the IGC file from what I thought was the Flymaster tracker using Notepad I would
have seen that it was actually a "copy" of that file taken from the Airtribune
web site.

I had already heard that there was no Live Tracking on the Flymaster Live
Tracking web site for the Santa Cruz Flats Race. I also knew (but didn't
connect) the fact that Belinda could follow the race on XCGuide with the group
number that would normally be used on the Flymaster Live Tracking web site.

Daniel Velez, the remote scorekeeper, then informed me that there was another
case of a missed turnpoint from the Wednesday task that needed to be
corrected with the pilot's flight instrument. The track log that Daniel had
showed him missing the last turnpoint so Daniel got Jamie to have Greg Kendall
send in his track log from his 5030.

On Saturday the 21st, the last task after two days of not flying when there were
high winds, we got two bogus track logs that required track logs from pilot's
flight instruments be sent to Daniel, mine and Kraig Coomber's.

https://ozreport.com/23.193

Both Daniel and I were still referring to the track logs that he was downloading
from the Airtribune web site as Flymaster tracker track logs, when in fact they
were "copies" of the track logs from the Flymaster web site, and it would
appear later not very good copies.

Not only were there missing track log points there was also the weird altitude
values from the Airtribune tracklog points which got further above the track log
points from the pilots' flight instruments the higher the pilot got. That still
doesn't make any sense.

With this height discrepancy really bothering me (and apparently no one else
except the always perceptive Gordon Rigg) I decided to look further into it. 

https://ozreport.com/1569588107

I was beginning to suspect that something was wrong with the Flymaster trackers.

That's when I checked out my Flymaster track logs from the 2019 Big Spring
Nationals against my 6030 track logs. I checked three flights. They were all
identical. Whoa.

Finally I decided to look at the track log files using Notepad. Whoa again. The
Flymaster tracks were certainly producing different designators for the trackers
in the track logs from the SCFR. I still didn't get it but I was getting warmer.

After thinking about what was right in front of my face I thought to ask whether
the track logs for the SCFR were coming from the Airtribune site and not the
Flymaster web site. I was just hard for me to believe that this would actually
be the case. I asked Daniel.

By the time he replied that they were indeed taking the track logs from the
Airtribune web site I had already concluded that was the case.

I followed the data and kept looking and looking again and despite not just
figuring it out when perhaps it should have been obvious I finally found enough
clues to take me in the right direction and away from my preliminary and
incorrect assumptions.

So I was left with the task of getting access to the Flymaster Live Tracking web
site to download the actual Flymaster tracker track log files for the SCFR. So
far that's not going very well. I've reached out to Jamie, Daniel, Brett, and
even Kate who was our scorekeeper at the Big Spring Nationals and obviously did
it right. I just want to confirm the theory that the actual Flymaster tracker's
track logs don't have the drop out problem. Kate has told me that she didn't
experience any dropouts during the Big Spring Nationals.

Finally on Monday morning I was able to get access to the Flymaster track logs
on the Flymaster server for the Santa Cruz Flats Race. Crisiano at Flymaster was
the one who gave me the final clue that I needed to be able to login to the
correct account. After that it was trivial to download the files and check out
the Flymaster tracker track logs against the Airtribune track logs.

The Flymaster tracker track log did not have the dropouts that the Airtribune
tracks had. I had remembered that Brett had told me and others not to use the
Airtribune track logs for scoring purposes only for Live Tracking. The problem
was not placement of the trackers in the harnesses. Even Kraig Coomber's tracker
worked just fine even though it was placed underneath his carbon back plate.

Elena Filonova wrote to me to say:

When you download the track log from Airtribune it is reprocessed
by it and filters out baro data.

That explains the different altitude values displayed in the
previous articles. Here is an example of the baro track from Jonny Durand's
flight from the Flymaster tracker vs. the baro (now GPS) track from the
Airtribune web site:

The blue line is the GPS altitude. Since you as the pilot are making decisions
about how high you can go if you are flying under airspace based on your baro
altitude, you might want to be sure that the scorekeeper is using your baro
altitude and not GPS altitude to determine if you infringe on airspace or not.

When I get ready to launch I set my baro altitude at the GPS altitude of the
launch site. This is easy to do with the Flytec 6030.

All this is traced on these two Facebook threads:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118763844883239/permalink/2421537051272562/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118763844883239/permalink/2414056872020580/