Story:
Typical Air Canada flight; brought my own food (minor hassle about bringing my own water through security!). I used my remote antenna this time so got a decent track all the way across -- and was less obvious to the flight crew who usually want me to turn it off.
The really cool part was having Google Earth running. I had let it zoom back and forth along the flight path overnight to fill the laptop's cache with imagery. Over Thunder Bay, the woman sitting next to me finally stopped peeking and straight out asked me "What is that you are looking at?"
I showed her where we were and she was astonished. Even better, it turned out she lived in North Vancouver, and I had imagery there for a cousin's place. I zoomed to it and to her amazement was able to zoom in and find her place! As luck would have it, she lived only a block away from my cousin...
She was practically shaking as she wrote the details down about Google Earth so she could get her husband to download it. I did explain that the image wasn't live, but I wasn't sure she realized that.
Typical Air Canada flight; brought my own food (minor hassle about bringing my own water through security!). I used my remote antenna this time so got a decent track all the way across -- and was less obvious to the flight crew who usually want me to turn it off.
The really cool part was having Google Earth running. I had let it zoom back and forth along the flight path overnight to fill the laptop's cache with imagery. Over Thunder Bay, the woman sitting next to me finally stopped peeking and straight out asked me "What is that you are looking at?"
I showed her where we were and she was astonished. Even better, it turned out she lived in North Vancouver, and I had imagery there for a cousin's place. I zoomed to it and to her amazement was able to zoom in and find her place! As luck would have it, she lived only a block away from my cousin...
She was practically shaking as she wrote the details down about Google Earth so she could get her husband to download it. I did explain that the image wasn't live, but I wasn't sure she realized that.
Tips:
1. A plug-in antenna and a discrete cable near a window lets you stick the GPS in the seat pocket, and avoids being hassled about having electronics on during the flight. (Hey come on guys, surely you should know these things only receive signals...)
2. Pre-load Google Earth on a laptop (see above). Many of the newer aircraft have 110V plugs now so you can run a laptop without having to worry about battery life on a flight this long.
1. A plug-in antenna and a discrete cable near a window lets you stick the GPS in the seat pocket, and avoids being hassled about having electronics on during the flight. (Hey come on guys, surely you should know these things only receive signals...)
2. Pre-load Google Earth on a laptop (see above). Many of the newer aircraft have 110V plugs now so you can run a laptop without having to worry about battery life on a flight this long.
Tags:
Air Canada, Canmore, Google Earth, laptop, antenna
Air Canada, Canmore, Google Earth, laptop, antenna
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