- Tap the Menu button to activate the menu..
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- Tap the Nav Tools button to move onto the second page of the menu
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- Tap the Virtual Radar button.
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- You're now on the Virtual Radar settings screen.
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- There isn't a lot to set here!
Tap the Flight ID button and give this flight an ID. The “ID” is what someone visiting the tracking website enters to know that it's your flight that they want to track. - The position report interval tells EasyVFR how often you want your positon to be updated. The tracking site shows the last 100 positions received. So if you set it as 1 second, then someone tracking your flight will have really accurate updates, but only be able to see the last 100 seconds of your flight. By the time you've landed, these 100 seconds are probably all ground movements!
We'd suggest setting this as 60 seconds, and then the last 1 hour and 40 minutes of your flight are visible to anyone tracking you.
- The last thing you have to do is tap the Flight Tracking button so that the green bar at the top of the button is illuminated. Flight tracking is now active will stay active until you disable it here at some future time.
- Note the message at the top of the screen. It has the link that you need to give to anyone wishing to track your flight.
- Once they go to the website http://virtualradar.pocketfms.com they will be asked to enter the aircraft identifier. This is the Flight ID that you entered at step 5 above.
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Once they enter the Flight ID and click [Track] they can track your flight!
- One important thing to note here is that tracking only happens when you are in flying mode. No tracking takes place while still in planning mode.
When in flight mode, if you look at the top right of the screen you'll see an “ACK” message.
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In this example it says “ACK @00:10”. This means that your last tracking data was acknowledged as received by our servers 10 seconds ago, and that is the most recent data that someone tracking your flight will be able to see. If the data is getting very delayed, this message will turn red.
While EasyVFR Virtual Radar is optimized to make the most of a poor data connection, you can obviously make things better by helping to improve the data connection as far as possible. Two tips that we have found that greatly improves things are:
- Make sure your data connection is up and running before take-off. Trying to get a data connection after take-off is more difficult.
- Use your phone for the data connection and place it on top of the panel with a good view outside. Make a WiFi hotspot from it and connect your tablet to it (or use Bluetooth). This way your phone has a better chance of getting a good connection than leaving it in your pocket, or on the passenger seat, or using your tablet's data connection when it's down low in the cockpit, resting on your lap. Your phone is perfectly positioned to get a data connection.
Here is an example of a flight tracked with Virtual Radar with the points recorded shown in Google Earth. As you can see even in a remote location, tracking works very well, with many breadcrumbs recorded even out to sea!
Flight tracking made easy with EasyVFR!
