Dr. John W. Glendening <<email>> (of BLIPMAPS fame) writes:

The California Condor, having a 9 ft wingspan and flying as high as 15,000 ft, is slowly making a comeback after having been reduced to a population of 22 birds in 1982. It is awesome to watch one of these big birds soaring and thermaling in the wild.

I am working with the Ventana Wildlife Society, who manages the condor population in Central California, to help engage the general public in their conservation efforts. Several of the birds carry a GPS tracking device and we hope to stimulate public interest by creating a few "condor flight" Google Earth files which folks could access via the VWS website (http://www.ventanaws.org/) to "fly along with a condor".

I know that some HG pilots are already using Google Earth to display flight traces from their logger GPS data. They have undoubtedly gained more experience with Google Earth than I and have found techniques which work effectively. So rather than re-invent the wheel myself, I'm soliciting volunteers with such experience to create a "cool" Google Earth file from the condor GPS data.

I should mention that the flight detail is not be that of a hang gliding trace, since energy limitations mean that only a single data point is obtained each hour (the data must be uplinked to a satellite) - we hope that the results will still be interesting, though not as interesting as if one was able to actually follow the condor while thermaling!

If you wish to volunteer to aid this effort to help the condors, and have experience producing Google Earth "fly along" files from GPS data, please contact me at <email> and I will provide more information.