news archive
News Archive - March, 2009
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31 March 2009
Global Positioning
Written by Lesley Springnall of Unlimited Magazine
- Issue 113, Sunday 1 March 2009
Tracking systems are a dime a dozen, so find your value proposition – that’s the sterling advice Dunedin’s Upstart business incubator boss Norman Evans gave software developer Chris Hinch.
On day one of American businessman Scott Kasprowicz’s attempt to break the round-the-world helicopter speed record, his satellite phone failed. All the months and months of planning Kasprowicz’s Grand Adventure 08 could have come to nothing, says Chris Hinch, founder and chief executive of Dunedin tracking technology firm TracPlus. But TracPlus, as well as providing real-time tracking for the record attempt, had written an application allowing Kasprowicz and his co-pilot Steve Sheik to use their tracking technology as a global text messaging system. “So they didn’t have to abandon the attempt. They could do all their coordinating and get all their messages through TracPlus,” explains Hinch.
Using TracPlus’s newly-opened US office in Atlanta, Georgia, the adventure’s AgustaWestland Grand helicopter’s combined tracking and messaging system enabled ground control to coordinate extremely fast turnarounds at refuelling stops. The quickest was less than five minutes, says Hinch. Kasprowicz and Sheik went on to smash the previous world record by nearly six days, taking just 11 days, seven hours and two minutes to circumnavigate the globe.