YB team member Natasha, joins Wellington College for an on-site visit.
In the summer of 2024, the Head of Outdoor and Adventure at Wellington College, Simon Waller, invited me to attend the school’s Bronze DofE expedition. As part of my role at YB tracking, I typically travel to three or four events per year. These are predominantly yacht races, but as I had not seen how the trackers were used on a DofE expedition, I was keen to visit. It also happened to be Wellington’s largest Bronze expedition to date, with 21 teams, set in a beautiful location and coinciding with a rare sunny week. As a keen hiker, I didn’t need much convincing. Sadly, my walking boots remained in the boot of my car, as monitoring this many students across such a large area necessitated a vehicle.
It was interesting to witness how an expedition leader monitors team locations in real time. While Bronze expeditions are often conducted in areas with reliable mobile coverage, we found ourselves in a region with limited signal. Sitting in the car with a map and my phone, I realised the value of our low-bandwidth SMS option. This feature enables you to request the grid reference of each team via SMS, delivering their latest positions as soon as the signal returns. When the mobile race viewer was temporarily unavailable, I requested the latest grid reference via SMS, and we were soon able to plot the team’s positions on the map and predict their intended route with ease.
Simon mentioned previous issues they had experienced with different tracking systems, whereby the trackers were “dropping out of signal and not finding signal again without a manual reboot”. This had resulted in an emergency message not being received and so there was concern that a call for help could go unnoticed. With the YB3 tracker, when the red alert button is pressed, a pre-determined list of first responders receives an email and an SMS, stating the team and their location. For this expedition we had decided to trial setting up a tracker as a first responder. If the red alert button was pressed, the responder tracker would also receive an SMS, ensuring the message would be delivered in the most remote areas and allowing an emergency response to be coordinated quickly.
“Setting up one of their units as an emergency receiver, allows us to have 100% confidence that if our students need to get in touch with us in an emergency we will always receive the message. Coupling this with their complete signal coverage gives us confidence that our groups are always findable.”
Fortunately, the only “emergency” we had that day was a plea for more water. The team of students had worked out how to use the free text message option on the tracker, and were delighted to see it had worked when we arrived with back up supplies for them all.
During the day, it became apparent that the tracks displayed on the mobile race viewer were at times tricky to follow. Seeing the viewer from the eyes of an expedition leader, highlighted some very quick adjustments that we could make. By adding team numbers to the markers and increasing the visibility of the tracks, we could easily enhance the viewing experience for leaders.
I’d like to extend my thanks to Simon Waller and Wellington College for the opportunity to attend their expedition. Not only was it a welcome break from my desk, but also an invaluable learning experience, providing insights into how our service is used and the importance of communication in the field. The feedback gathered on-site has prompted improvements for all our DofE expeditions, highlighting key information in our guide that had previously gone unnoticed and enhancing the track and team display on the mobile viewer for greater clarity. We have also introduced the use of responder trackers to several other schools conducting expeditions in remote areas, ensuring even better support in challenging environments.