At Last

[Roland]

some sense.

 

http://www.pigeontracker.com/

[paddymac]

A good investment for fanciers, roll on 2019

[Delboy]

Every fed should buy a dozen of these, or better still, the unions buy them and trial them in all the areas they cover.

[paddymac]

Very good suggestion Derek, it would be interesting to see the results from the different liberation areas and the flight path the birds are taking or pulled off their line of flight on their journey home. Maybe after a few liberations we would be able to identify the problem areas that are birds run into trouble.

[Delboy]

Very good suggestion Derek, it would be interesting to see the results from the different liberation areas and the flight path the birds are taking or pulled off their line of flight on their journey home. Maybe after a few liberations we would be able to identify the problem areas that are birds run into trouble.

 

Exactly

[Roland]

Another: Here is the link to the track of today's exercise of my youngsters. It's a rainy, windy and cold day. Twice they flew to Namao Ridge and then returned. I have never trained them that way. The funny thing is that that's where I used to live in the late 70's and early eighties.

https://skyleader.com.tw/share/20180901hsM8PY. Not mine.

 

Then

These units, although weighing about 4 grams, are fastened to the band and do bother the bird enough to be a hindrance. There are some birds in the advertisement of Skyleader that show the track of a pigeon that won a race but those couple of races were marked with a good tailwind. Even in those races were a few other birds with a GPS unit that deviated quite remarkably from a straight line home and that was my experience during training tosses also. There seams to be something that bothers the bird wearing it when the going gets tough.

I toss my birds now and rarely see a bird on the loft when I get home. Should there be one I know that something is not right with it as the others were home and continued flying. So I wanted to find out where they go after a toss. On that day I couldn't toss and decided to slip on one of these GPS units and that is what produced the track linked to above.

 

I used the Sky Tracker GPS units heavily in my early young bird training this spring and summer. I got some fascinating data, but I concluded the same thing. The units cause the birds trouble. As a result, I discontinued their use. Once the races are over, I plan on doing some more work with the trackers. They are proving everything we thought we knew about homing and navigation needs a re-think. Mike

 

Hi Jeff

 

I have studied at least 100 tracks over three years from all over the world, so I am starting to see some reliable patterns. My own training this year from 30 miles and in and Rick Fyfe's training from 80 to 100 miles north of Lake Ontario and a local loft that raced the same two tracked birds for the entire OB program have proved very enlightening. Some to the trends I am noticing are that the same bird never seems to fly the same route twice. Birds rarely deviate too far off the line to home but when they are late it is because they have landed. They 100% do not follow rivers, roads or anything else for any extended time. They do not seem to leave the release site together (individual birds are following their own line right from release i.e. no big flocks heading in the general direction of home). They do not have a constant cruising speed, changing from 600 m/m to 1800 and even 1900 m/m all the way down. They do not speed up as they near home. Their lines do not get straighter as they get near home. Sometimes they seem to have no problem crossing large water bodies and sometimes they seem to avoid flying over water bodies (the same birds flying the same course on different days). The birds that score near the top of the results are the ones that flew the straightest, not the fastest.

 

Those are trends I have noticed so far. Mike

[yeboah]

Very good suggestion Derek, it would be interesting to see the results from the different liberation areas and the flight path the birds are taking or pulled off their line of flight on their journey home. Maybe after a few liberations we would be able to identify the problem areas that are birds run into trouble.

Problem area's

That would be every mile here Pat

[Adee1888]

£78 each thing is if you buy 2 what birds do they go on hmmm gonna buy a couple and put them on 2 old cocks that never slept out once