Global satellite tracking company Track 24 Solo is sponsoring the 2011 Mongol Rally team, the Social Media Syndicate, and will provide the team with its online Solo Viewer and a Packmaster Lo-Pro tracking and two-way messaging device.
This will lets family and friends of the four team members track their route as they drive unsupported from London on 23 July to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, covering 16,000km, 15 countries and two continents. The team is raising money for the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation, which helps homeless and abandoned children in Mongolia.
The Lo-Pro is a small, mobile, two-way personal satellite tracking device. It uses the Iridium global network for two-way messaging and connectivity across the entire planet. Secure online access will allow the team’s supporters to log in and track the team’s location, progress and status on the Solo Viewer. Satellite images showing the team’s progress will be uploaded to Track 24 Solo’s Facebook page, making it available to anyone who clicks “Like” on the page.
“We are delighted to be able to offer the Social Media Syndicate the new Solo for this year’s Mongol Rally,” said Tim Grant, CEO of Track 24 Solo. “As the team will be travelling across such secluded, often-unmapped areas, it is very important they have a means of communicating. With 90% of the world lacking GSM coverage, the Solo will allow them to alert the appropriate parties should they encounter any trouble, or divert from their route.
“We are only too happy to equip them with the Solo to keep them safe, in contact and on the right track, knowing that they are raising money for such worthwhile causes.”
The Lo-Pro also has two-way satellite messaging capability, providing the four adventurers – travel bloggers Deb Corbeil, Dave Bouskill, Sherry Ott and Rick Griffin – with a communications channel to stay in touch as they drive across some of the world’s most isolated and unfriendly terrain, including mountains and deserts. The device also has a panic button, which lets the team instantly notify their friends and family in case of an emergency. More than 300 teams took part in last year’s rally, many of them not making it all the way to Mongolia.
“It gives us real peace of mind to know that our friends and family can watch our progress in near real-time on Google Maps,” said Bouskill. “The two-way satellite text messaging is also a benefit, as it gives us a communications channel in areas with no cell phone coverage – of which there will be many on the Mongol Rally.
“The panic button means that if something goes wrong, we can notify someone within a minute, safe in the knowledge that our position and status is being monitored across the Track 24 Solo network.”