Flight following

Aircraft tracking by satellite

Perched at 4500 feet, my finger tracks a line along the chart, while I scan outside for landmarks on the way to the NSW township of Goulburn. 400 miles away at the Avalon Air Show, my every move and cross-track error is being observed on the big screen through the growing technology of Satellite Tracking.

Spinning a Web.

For this flight, the light aircraft was equipped with a ‘Spidertracks’ unit. The sleek, unobtrusive heart of the system is about the size of your hand and weighs in at 360g. Hard-wired or powered via the cigarette lighter, the ‘Spider’ transmits a GPS position to the orbiting Iridium satellite network at pre-defined intervals of around 1 to 5 minutes; or in this instance, every 6 minutes. From there the data is relayed back to one of the secure servers in Australia or New Zealand where it is translated into a visual record of the aircraft’s flight path which can be accessed by multiple authorised users anywhere, anytime via the internet.