It all started when I applied for a free ADS-B receiver through Plane Finder, a UK based company that provides real-time flight tracking and statistics. Ever wonder how Plane Finder works? Planes flying overhead send ADS-B signals from takeoff to landing, containing various flight parameters such as speed, altitude, heading and barometric pressure. Receivers on the ground pick up these signals, decode the raw packets, and send them to various flight tracking providers such as Plane Finder, FlightAware, and FlightRadar24. This all happens in real time. But there’s one problem: there are not many receivers around to pick up all the signals from a whole flight, leading to gaps in the information. This is why Plane Finder sent me an ADS-B receiver for better coverage in the St. Cloud Minnesota Area. It took about 3 weeks from first email to shipment. It then took another week to plan and get installed. My thoughts on it? It work’s pretty great. Last night I messaged the St. Cloud Airport and asked for the flight schedules for the Allegiant flights to and from Punta Gorda, Florida and Mesa, Arizona. Today I tracked an incoming flight all the way to the airport! This really shows Plane Finder is working! All in all, Plane Finder is really great and if you need to track a loved one’s flight, definitely use.
So this school year, I decided that I wanted to be more involved in school activities, and I had decided to join the robotics team, as invited by another team member. I talked to the coach and was informed of the pre-season meeting date. I pretty much went into robotics blinded, having no idea what I was doing. Although I knew I came in knowing I wanted to be a programmer, that soon changed. A few pre-season meetings commenced, and then it was already the first practice. It was very evident that we had a lot of new programmers, and our lead programmer was more involved at first, but then I found myself mentoring the new ones after the first few weeks. Now keeping in mind that Java is not an easy language to learn, and I understand the struggles students may face jumping right into it with no prior programming experience. Doing as un-suggested by a coach, we started them on Codecademy and one-to-one sessions. The lead programmer would do more of the complex topics, while I would he
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