2012-03-08 47 -40

Thu 8 Mar 2012 in 47,-40: 47.4130725, -40.3416416 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Somewhere over the North Atlantic, (almost) on track F of the NAT on this day.

Participants

Me (wolkenjaeger), 11 other crew members and 178 passengers. Well, at the end only 4 people were knowing that we tried to get a geohash.

Plans

Well, I learned about geohashing a few days ago in connection with the 2012-02-26_global. So I prepared myself to chase the airways for geohashes from our flight from Zürich to New York.

Expedition

What a great day to go flying. Clear skys and a great crew. That's the recipe for a successful and fun commercial flight.

As we don't recieve any good GPS signals in the cockpit (Faraday Cage?) I had to check the route manually for any geohashes enroute, which is quite some work as we are crossing a graticule in around 10 minutes average and my job is not just sitting there and check for random coordinates. Second problem is a pure air safety one: we just cannot go off our IFR flightplan, which means the hash needs to be right on our track.

The first point I wanted to test was in the graticule 47,-15 - that was the time I quickly learned that our first possibility was in graticule 47,-40. So I inserted a pilot waypoint "HASH2" into our flight managment computer (FMS) to check our progress enroute.

At the time of overflying the waypoint we slightly navigated off the track F to get get as close as possible (but still within safety limits). The commander took care of the flying as I took the proving photographs and the Stupid Grin [tm] photo.

On the flight back, I did not chase any geohashes, as I wanted to check on my first geohash first. Did I do everything correct?

On the next morning, after sleeping my jetlag out, I checked on the correctness of my first geohash and there it was: a huge mistake. I didn't read the rules well, and the geohash in the graticule 47,-40 was not N 47°57.319 W 40°27.327, but N 47°24.784 W 40°20.498 !!! Noooo !!!! Where was my mistake? 30W_Time_Zone_Rule gave the solution. So that was my first expedition and my first contact with geohashing. However I hope you guys don't do the same mistake.

I will be back.

Tracklog

n/a

Photos

• P1060024-LR 800.jpg - We are here, custom waypoint "HASH2" with a lateral distance of 0.0nm and the GPS (left) showing the coordinates.