Winlink used in Pikes Peak Cycling Hill Climb

Submitted by KD0SFY on Mon, 2019-09-02 01:46

On 10 Aug 2019, members of Pikes Peak ARES used Winlink in the 9600 bd Packet Peer to Peer mode to support the Pikes Peak Cycling Hill Climb. As in years past, the challenge was to get the results from the 14,115 ft summit down to the awards/staging area at 9,400 ft. It is only a 12.5 mile drive (5.6 miles Line Of Sight), but has over 155 turns and takes about 30-40 minutes to drive the results down, plus there would be cyclists on the road. To get the results down to the awards area, VHF packet had been used, but at 1200 bd still took while and required operators who were familiar with command line interfaces of TNCs. Using Timewave PK-96 USB TNCs, UHF, and Winlink at 9600 bd provided a fast data transfer and an operating suite that required very little training. In all, 13 files were transferred from the summit to the awards area and the race directors and timing officials were extremely happy with the results.

BTW, this is the exact same course as the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, just with bicycles (and a unicycle), instead of cars and motorcycles. It takes the cyclists over an hour to summit, whereas it takes the cars around 10 minutes.

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