Waddington Reporting (Your opinions on)

[deerhunter]

Give yourself a pat on the back, its nice to see in this day and age people who go that extra mile

Thanks from me

[baz1]

what I find amazing is 354 views and only 21 replys. so a big pat on the back from us guys

[John W]

LincsVRS, you're going far beyond, the call of duty.
I have no input to your questionnaire as I don't log.
Though I'm sure your efforts will be much appreciated by those who seek this information.
Well done to you.



Regards,
John

[TeeJay]

Hi LincsVRS
Just to say I'm not a number cruncher, but. Logs are always interesting to see. From any airbase.
As far as this site goes, the more people that post more information of any description, the better FC gets
Keep up the good work mate
Trev

[LincsVRS]

Thanks guys, let's see how it goes, it's not a lot of work by any means as I've set the computer to log the data so it's little more than a copy an paste job. Also most stuff activates a siren at the side of my bed so I just look at my screen, maybe switch the wireless headphones on and tweet of the iPad. Only time when it's difficult is when I'm asleep, which is during the day mostly :-s

We shall see!

[Grahame W]

Really appreciate the Twitter feeds. One small point: would it be possible to note the aircraft type (where it's not obvious) as well as the serial and call sign? I know most of us have a copy of MAM and can look up the serial, but it saves a bit of time!

[LincsVRS]

Yup, I did think that during the day for the twitter stream and have tried to remember to add it each time from that point. Also if I haven't said please anyone on twitter add @EGXWinfo into any of your own tweets about Waddington, you may have better information certainly if your visiting, then I can RT your info and it helps me to be notified of things too. I was going to post an email address for everyone on the forum to use for this purpose however I bet I will end up with loads of spam if I post it in a public forum.

It's all trial and error I guess! Oh and if anyone knows an IT genius who knows PlanePlotter I could really benefit from an alert to tweet program and an alert to email program. I will try and find a free service so people can sign up by email to be notified of tweets if people may find that useful.

Cheers
LincsVRS

[baz1]

I wonder if chrisglobe could help with the above?

[LincsVRS]

Just a quick one Chris has given me a shout on PM Baz :-) Nothing definite but some lines of enquiry!

[baz1]

he's a good chap' maybe he will come up with something?

[LincsVRS]

Yea, our problem is a lack of email alerts coming out of PlanePlotter, It only does visual alerts on screen and SMS if you purchase credits. If we could get emails out we could then use another service to automate emails to twitter so a tweet would go out for every aircraft. However saying that there are still problems to overcome as I'm not sure tweeting each bit of radar traffic would be wise, just litterally in the last half hour or so I have probably had 10 to 12 aircraft transit though and that would mean 10 to 12 tweets or even 24 in one hour. So still some pondering to do!

[POL]

I have an idea, just asked on the PP mailing list to see if it'll work

If I remember rightly, as long as you limit the emails to 15 every 15 minutes, you'll be fine

[LincsVRS]

Spot on Chris and thanks for the tweet also

[baz1]

I knew he would come up with something!

[mrdavidwalker]

Hi LincsVRS,
Just followed you (egxwinfo) on Twitter, great idea mate,
Thank you for setting this up,
Kind Regards,
Dave

[LincsVRS]

No worries. I think I doubled the followers in the last hour or so not that anything was happening. Let's see how it goes, hopefully I will be able to keep up with it, once it gets more followers people may contribute more and help with info when I'm out of the operations room lol.

[LincsVRS]

I've spotted a potential key for automating the twitter account:

Waddington Squawk range is 3601 to 3634 . Now I think:
3601 - 3617 is Radar Traffic
3620 - 3634 is Airfield Traffic

Therefore we could potentially automate PlanePlotter -> Twitter alerts for 3620 - 3624 only so only tweets about stuff using the airfield go out. As this is just my theory at the moment I would appreciate anyone keeping an eye out for exceptions to this rule, like a 3602 landing or a 3620 just passing through (as well as me).

I will continue to monitor when I can and we might not even solve the technical bit yet.

PP master users: Also I feel I'm going to have to build another computer with PP on just for the automated alerts as I already use the two machines I have now to alert me of other stuff too! Unless anyone has any experience using virtual environments (Never managed to set their connections to networks up successfully myself). I could build another machine for the automated twitter alerts, set it up as an SMU to MLAT everything under Waddington LARS (geography) and even have a Waddington Website running Virual Radar Server (or similar) to have a constant Radar Screen around Waddington and a list of everything flying at any given time?

[John W]

It might be advantageous to copy P/P's John Locker in on your last post.
Either direct or via the P/P Yahoo group.

John.

[LincsVRS]

Cool will do, ChrisGlobe might be able to help too.

John: if you know anyone at the flying school or ATC at Waddo confirmation of the two squawk ranges would be really useful and if that system ever breaks down (i.e. Busy periods/Airshow) don't worry if not, just a thought.

[LincsVRS]

Just noticed I got mixed up between John W and John from the WAVE, that message was for WAVE John however John W if you have any contacts feel free to get me some info lol :-)