Over the last few weeks I have been looking at options to increase the coverage of our AIS location map. For previous races we have relied on land base reception stations to receive our position and send it to marinetraffic.com, the data is then put on a map and displayed on our site. This has been fine while we are in the Hauraki Gulf, and I know lots of people have been checking up on where we are, the AIS page counter goes mad at times.

The RNI will take us out of the Hauraki Gulf and coverage in other part of NZ is not as good. We  are currently trialling a system to send our AIS location to marinetraffic.com using our GSM extended coverage 3G modem.  This will mean anytime we have coverage you should be able to see our location on our AIS location page.

Vodafone 3G extended coverage does not extend equally sea ward of New Zealand in all areas. However, coverage maps are available at http://www.vodafone.co.nz/coverage/. A sample coverage for North Cape is shown below.

 

Vodafone 3G extended coverage for North Cape. Source: www.vodafone.co.nz