News & Reviews
Satmap Events
10-12 September 2010
Visit Satmap at the Ireland & UK Mountain Rescue Conference
Dublin
My Satmap Story
As used by:
20 May 10
Satmap Story
Ballooning with the Active 10 at 90
We bought our Active 10 shortly after they were launched and we've found it an amazingly useful tool ever since. It has guided us along rough cycle tracks in Cannock Chase and Derbyshire. It took the uncertainty out of deciding which sheep track was the right one when hiking across the North Yorkshire moors. It helps to plan new routes around our home turf as we gradually improve our stamina and speed in preparation for a running race later this year. The ability to study the route profile has been particularly useful. I don't think I've been designed to run up hill. Most recently, it even helped make my mums ninetieth birthday present a little more special.
Mum declared a few years ago, that if she made the ripe old age of ninety, she would like to have a flight in a hot air balloon. So, one cold, sunny, spring morning we gathered in the grounds of Shrugborough Hall in Staffordshire watching our balloon being inflated and on command scrambled aboard.
The flight was perfect. I't taken our trusty Satmap. We drifted gently to the East, towards the rising sun, across the River Trent and the Trent and Mersey Canal at Great Heywood. The Satmap was brilliant. Flying over the frosted countryside, hares playing in the fields below, telling Mum the names of the farms, roads and woodlands. Pointing out villages, towns and Lichfield Cathedral in the distance.
OK, I could have done all that with a paper map but I think our trip would not have been so enjoyable if I was continually working out our position. However, there were some of Mums questions that would have been very difficult to answer without the Satmap. "How fast are we going?" "How high are we?" With the trip log on and the altitude data source set to GPS our Satmap had the answers.
Twelve miles and an hour or so after lift off we touched down and gently the basket rolled on to its side just to the west of Barton under Needwood. It was a memorable flight that lived up to Mum's expectations but was certainly made even better by our Satmap.
By Neil Harrison
