RandomRace is a competition that is held twice a year in Russia. The competition consists of about 10 to 20 balloons which measure about 1 meter in diameter. These balloons are attached with a landing pack which is composed of equipment such as a GPS tracker. Once the balloons are launched they can reach and altitude of 7 Kilometers or about 4.3 miles up into the sky before they start their descent down to earth. While the balloons are up in the sky there are teams which are composed of about 30 to 50 people that are monitoring the GPS tracking signal on a mobile tracking platform. Once the balloons land the teams must retrieve as many landing packs as possible in order to be declared the winners of the RandomRace.
RandomRace is a very important event that needs to have a reliable, stable and accurate GPS tracker. This is why Dmitry Bulavinov, the RandomRace team leader has chosen to use Meitrack’s MT90V4 Personal GPS tracker. “We have tested plenty of other trackers and selected the MT90V4 because it is water resistant, reliable, has high sensitivity GPS and GSM receivers and above all the MT90V4 apart from other trackers can transmit coordinates and altitude as well”, stated Dmitry.
In the course of the RandomRace competitions there have been incidents that have stood out which tested the durability and functions of the MT90V4. During the Spring RandomRace four balloons landed in the middle of Lagoda Lake. Retreiving the trackers was going to be an issue for the teams so the coordinators remotely put the MT90V4 in deep sleep mode, only activating them twice a day in order to save battery power. Eventually the days passed and the batteries on the tracker ran out. A month after the tracker was found by a local person near-by and was safely returned. Another event happened on June 30th when the balloon landed 4 kilometers off shore from Ladoga Lake. The recovery efforts were unsuccessful but was later recovered a month later in a river originating from Ladoga Lake 70 kilometers away. The late recovery of the units did not affect them as they were still in good working conditions with the exception of the orange color fading because of the amount of time they were exposed to the elements.
Meitrack is proud to have the MT90V4 personal tracker being such an important part of a wonderful and exciting competition that is the RandomRace. To learn more about this exciting race visit http://www.randomrace.ru/

 

images courtesy of randomrace.ru