Godzone Adventure Race

Follow The Yellowbrick Trackers

Rob Howard / 12.03.2014

If you’ve been watching the great live coverage from Godzone Adventure in New Zealand then you’ll probably have been addicted to the live satellite tracking that has become so much a part of expedition adventure racing. It’s brought the most inaccessible sport on the planet to a mass audience worldwide ... and also distracted them from their work, rest, chores and probably their families. It’s compulsive viewing!

It is not always so effective however, when the tracking units fail to update, run out of battery or fail altogether it can be very frustrating for watchers, and is a problem for races using them as part of their safety cover.

Fortunately, Godzone have been using Yellowbrick Satellite trackers and in the words of Race Director Warren Bates, “as per usual the Yellowbricks have been pretty much faultless”. He added, “other races try and cut costs by going elsewhere but these units prove time and time again that they are the best - especially in the rugged terrain of NZ and we love the fact that we can use their technology and units but at the same time overlay our own website presentation over it.”

So what is a Yellowbrick, how did they get into Adventure Racing, and why do they work so well?

SleepMonsters.com plays a small part in this story as they were first used in the 2007 AR World Championships in Scotland where we provided all the online coverage for the race, and the introduction of Yellowbrick trackers for this was a turning point in race safety, publicity and timing. (We also provided between 3 and 5 full feature reports plus photos from the front, middle and back of the course daily throughout the race – something which has sadly never been done since.)

The potential of satellite tracking for expedition adventure racing was easy enough to see and the first Yellowbricks were thrown into a World Champs previously untested in adventure racing and in the very early stages of development. And with a lot of hard graft on the ground they worked!

It was a wake-up call when a team was given a penalty for taking a short-cut on the prologue and a revelation in race management to have the tracking map displayed on the wall of HQ.  Marshals were not put in place 12 hours too early, safety boats were sent to teams off-course on the difficult sea kayak, viewers watched teams going round in circles and race photographers were happy not to have to wait hours on a sodden hillside with no idea when a team would turn up! (For the first time ever I went to sleep ahead of the winners finishing – knowing their Yellowbrick would ping me a text when they were close to the finish. Bliss!)

The early units were pretty big – in fact they were house brick sized and weight. They were bright yellow too ...  The antennae were new technology and some of the functions were basic (believe it or not they were switched on by placing a little round magnet inside), and the batteries (which make up most of the weight) could not last the whole race, so needed topping up.

However the Yellowbricks were purpose-built for adventure racing. (Races had used trackers before but they were essentially antenna and batteries attached to Satphones inside a Peli case.)  The Yellowbricks were rugged, waterproof, floated, and had no switches for the teams to touch – they just had to carry them.

The 2007 ARWC race helped launch Yellowbrick tracking and it’s gone on to great success working with Expeditions and races worldwide, particularly in sailing. The company has a huge amount of experience in tracking in difficult and remote locations and now holds over 1000 tracking units in its rental stock.

However, the race didn’t establish Yellowbricks as the de facto trackers for expedition racing – the trackers were too heavy, the costs high and the SPOT Messenger came along and was unfortunately adopted by many races.  Unfortunately because they didn’t work well enough for adventure racing and the tracking was poor and frustrating. They were smaller and cheaper because they were mass market devices, but smaller antenna and limited batteries, plus lots of buttons are not what AR needs for tracking. Nor did SPOT offer full global coverage. They couldn’t be used in Patagonia for example, whereas Yellowbrick could as they used the more reliable and truly global Iridium satellite network.

[Some of the same pros and cons apply to the Delorme devices used by some races currently – they are built for a mass market, not specifically for endurance events so batteries need changing and there are still too many buttons for teams to fiddle with, or to cope with in emergencies.]

Yellowbricks really made a comeback into AR at the first Godzone race 2 years ago after the launch of Yellowbrick Version 3.0. This is both much smaller and more powerful than the original units – the technology has made huge advances since 2007.

The V3 weighs just 305 gm including the battery for a hand held unit, and the fully charged battery can transmit over 2000 times. In perfect conditions they have reported every 15 minutes for 25 days, but in practice where there are ravines/forests (or teams put them deep in rucksacks) they have to work harder.  So for an adventure race they last 10-12 days (at 15 minute intervals) and that is more than enough. Yellowbrick also monitor the battery remotely and if power is dropping can make adjustments to stretch battery life. All the units also stop transmitting at 3.0% battery power so the Alert button can still be used for emergencies.

This is the other great advance with the V3; it allows for 2-way messaging and has been used very effectively at Godzone. Pre-programmed messages can be sent and replies received and in this race alone teams have contacted HQ to report injury, ask for a pick up when injured, call for a doctor, and report they are lost but OK/sleeping.

There is also the Alert button which sends an emergency message to a pre-programmed list of recipients. This could be HQ, Race Directors and key rescue and medical personnel for example. (It is secured so can’t be pressed accidentally.)

Those are the key points for adventure races, along with the fact they are tested and approved to high standards of waterproofing and by the military for reliability. They do have other features, including Bluetooth (which means you can update Facebook from anywhere), and are not just for use by events, they can be bought on contract by individuals and teams who regularly venture off the beaten track.  

So, there you have it, the story behind the research, technology and investment that has gone into allowing you to follow those little team shirts on the Godzone website this week.

You can find out the full details on Yellowbrick on their website at http://www.yellowbrick-tracking.com/ and if you want to hire them for an event or buy your own SleepMonsters can offer you a discount. For details and to make an enquiry see http://www.sleepmonsters.com/partner.php or click on the ad. on the website.

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