The Adventures of a Rally Roadie

We’re all ready for the show to begin. This is our third day here and the race doesn’t start until tomorrow. The Lowrance units need to have the data chips installed by PCI and we have to get all of the GPS trackers setup so that they can all communicate with Spotwalla.

The Lowrance GPS units have the route way points programmed onto a data chip and that chip has to be installed by a technician. In order to prevent the racers from prerunning the race route, the chips are held by PCI until the race organizers release them to the competitors. At 9 AM we send all of the Lowrance units to the PCI trailer and wait for them to come back.

While we wait for the chips to be installed, we tackle the Garmin Inreach GPS trackers. The Inreach trackers, in addition to sending the trackers position back to Garmin can also send and receive texts. The Inreach devices use the Iridium GPS satellites to send and receiver messages so we can still communicate with each other when there are no mobile phone networks available. The communications is quite slow but it does work reliably.

The older Inreach trackers actually have a small (very small) virtual keyboard to enter the texts. Fortunately, you can BlueTooth pair a phone to the tracker and use the phone keyboard to compose messages. (The newer Inreach Mini trackers do not have the small virtual keyboard so in order to compose a text you must have a phone connection. That may be a drawback in some circumstances (still another device to keep charged) but it isn’t likely to be an issue in the vehicles.)

We will use the one Inreach in the BRB as the base station and the rest of the trackers will be able to communicate with that one to send and receive messages. We’ve taken mine as the base station Inreach and paired it with an Ipad to make sending and receiving messages easier. Now we have to get all of the Inreach email addresses distributed to every one so that the communication can actually take place. And that means Brennan (chief comms geek) and I (Inreach geek) have to show each person how to actually find the address and how to compose and send a message.

Next, each Inreach has to be set up on Spotwalla. Spotwalla is a website that you can register your devices with. Once the Spotwalla account is setup, we have to allow each Inreach to share it’s current location with Spotwalla so that when the Inreach tracking is enabled, Spotwalla will display the current location of the tracker.

So, to recap, the race car has the Lowrance GPS device to show the route way points and the current location of the race car. The race car has a Stella device that reports in near real time the current position of the race car back to race management. The race car has an Inreach device to report it’s position every 2 minutes to Garmin and Spotwalla interrogates Garmin every 5 minutes to post the car’s position on it’s website. Both the driver and the navigator have mobile phones to use when there is a mobile network. And, finally, the race car has a VHF radio to communicate with the BRB when in range.

All of this is available to the BRB. We have a laptop to access the Stella data and the Spotwalla website. We have a large screen LED TV to use as a display for the laptop. We have the Ipad to communicate with the Inreach. And we have a VHF radio to communicate with the race car when it’s in range. We are available to relay for Spacex launches if needed.

The comms finally set up, back to the hotel a few blocks away to clean up and at 6 PM there’s the dreaded driver meeting. “Dreaded”? That’s not really fair, of course. All teams have a love/hate relationship with driver’s meetings. The meetings are used first to disseminate last minute info (Rt 3 lout of Ensenada is in terrible shape. Drive 25 mph or less), re-enforce rules (play nice, children), build up the camaraderie and generally get all to see each other for the first time. But, as is usually the case, the meeting drags on way too long and the question period at the end of the meeting is tortue.

Finally, the last stupid question (contrary to the common wisdom, some questions are stupid and the entire group should be subjected to them) is asked and very patiently answered and the meeting breaks up. It’s off to organizer-provided free beer and tacos which turn out to be pretty good.

It’s been a long day and we break for the hotels. Well, some of do. Others are still sampling the local entertainment. Whatever your taste, tomorrow the preparations end and the race starts.

Obi-wan