Forward Control Vehicles and GPS Tracking

[Rob_Brookes]

Another one sought by a number of teams is the ability to GPS track a forward control (C3) vehicle whilst also being able to attach the same radio to a laptop and using it to track team members out on the hill. In theory this is possible all in the same radio by using an SRM9030 fitted with a Dmap board that has a GPS engine added to it. This is electrically possible and did cause us to get our hopes raised that we might indeed be able to do everything using only one radio.

Sadly this turns out not to be but for a fairly mundane and non-electrical reason that's obvious when you think about it. In order to be tracked by the base, a GPS equipped vehicle needs a unique callsign in the same way all the SRP portables do. My own is 16817 and my radio is programmed accordingly.

In order for the same radio to be used to track other GPS equipped ones, it needs to be programmed as a base. In this case the unique callsign is 1. The radio cannot have two callsigns programmed and so can't perform both jobs simultaineously, simple as that I'm afraid. Having said that, according to an email I received several years ago, it's actually the 'Dispatcher' address that the GPS radios report to and not the Own Data Address of the base radio so there might still be a way around this. I've passed the question back to TMC in Australia and will let you know what they say. However, at the moment, using one radio to track others and be tracked itself, isn't possible.