Flyfunston

Hi all,

We have had several technology upgrades at Fort Funston we’d like to announce.

1) Additional webcam and web page

The Fort Funston club has installed a new webcam and a new home for the basic wind/weather page. Check out http://flyfunston.org/newwebcam . You can bookmark this page instead of the older http://funston.appweb.org/ .

Click on each of the pictures to get larger versions, especially the panorama and largest shot at the bottom of the page. Click again on that photo just to make sure you get the largest size available (some browsers auto-shrink images).

There is a lot of detail in the photos but you cannot identify individual people and can't see into the bush.

The camera refreshes every 5 minutes.

We opted not to go with a live video stream since these usually limit us to 1 or 2 simultaneous users, they go down more frequently and they work for fewer people.

Without going into the tech details (we’ll post those on the FF board sometime) this system shouldn’t go down as much as the previous webcam and it should be easier/faster to get it back up when it does go down.

As before, the wind is still being reported from a weather vane just across from the Stables. We will probably add another wind meter at the clubhouse, or even at the cliff sometime in the next year now that we have a computer and network connection we can use as a platform.

2) Funston wind reports by text message

On your mobile phone, send a text message to 41411 with the message body: “wind” (not case sensitive). Inside of a minute you should get back a text message with the last two 15-minute wind readings from Funston. The wind is actually being measured by Skyline Blvd across from the Stables.

This is useful for when the wind talker is busy or when you want to silently check the wind.

We do not charge for this service, but your wireless carrier may bill you for text messages. Without these being included you’ll probably be charged $.05 to $0.10 per message. You can get bundles of messages cheap, e.g. Cingular offers 100 messages/month for $5.

3) Use your mobile phone browser to see Funston wind

If you have a phone and service with web browsing, point it at http://flyfunston.org (and bookmark the page). We customize the page to look good on the smaller mobile phone screens. Drop us a line if you’ve tried this and the layout looks funky.

4) Wi-fi at Funston clubhouse
For those of you with wireless laptops, there is now a wireless Internet (wi-fi) base station in the clubhouse. It reaches to just outside the clubhouse should you want to park and connect. There is a password on the connection, but all pilots are welcome to share it with each other. Please ask one of the club officers or other Funston regulars what it is.