2012-03-08 47 -40

Location

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

Participants

Me (User: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 receive 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 management 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. The commander took care of the flying as I took the proving photographs and the group photo. Additional Information: On the NAT system, you can go off track at a maximum of 2nm to the right, the point was within 1nm, we were flying 1nm right of the track anyway according to procedures so it did not take a lot to overfly the point.

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

My first try: "HASH" in the graticule 48,-15
We are here, custom waypoint "HASH2" with a lateral distance of 0.0nm and the GPS (left) showing the coordinates.
We did it!