Where's Joe Updates

Just a quick note regarding the Where's Joe map above. You may have noticed fewer points on the map from my commute to Spokane here lately, and in fact there are very few points at all between Post Falls, ID and Spokane. This is because I changed the path setting on my radio. I decided it might be a good idea to look at the operating procedures that are suggested by those running the repeaters I'm using. Figured it might be courteous to do so anyway. Well, they suggest a path of Wide 1-1 if I'm going to be transmitting more often than every 2 minutes. Not every repeater is an i-gate that will get my coordinates onto the internet. Some of them are just booster repeaters. A path of Wide 1-1 means that I transmit to only the most proximal repeaters and don't go beyond that. This works great down in Moscow because most of the i-gate repeaters down there are within one hop of my transmission. However, up north, the only repeater I can hit on the first hop that is an i-gate (or rather connects to one without another hop anyway), is on lookout pass. As you might imagine, I would need a clear line of sight to get that one which is why I do best on that one in Post Falls and Hayden. I'm also able to hit one up near Sandpoint occasionally out on the prairie. However, I'm down behind some hills between there and Spokane and then I'm far enough away that it is a hit and miss proposition. Unfortunately, the repeater that I pick up inbetween is a booster repeater, so any transmissions sent with a Wide 1-1 path don't get transmitted on to the i-gate repeaters. The booster repeaters read the Wide 1-1 and that tells them to stop there. In order to get it to the i-gate repeaters, I have to set my path to Wide 1-1, Wide 2-1. The booster repeaters then read that as a signal to go ahead and send the transmission on to the next wave of repeaters and then I'm able to hit an i-gate. You might have noticed that if you mouse over the car or any of the points, you can now follow the path of my transmission from me to the i-gate and all of the repeaters it goes through inbetween. Kind of cool I think. The trade off with the Wide 1-1,Wide 2-1 path is that recommended practice is that you only transmit every two minutes as opposed to the every 30 seconds that I have been doing. I don't think anyone would come after me with a gun, but it is an unspoken rule in the world of radio that courtesy rules the day. If I tie up all of the repeaters in the North West every 30 seconds, I guess that isn't exactly courteous. ;-) So, from here on out, I will have a lower temporal resolution, but looking at today's trip from Spokane to Hayden, it is plenty.

In short, what you see now is at least 2 minutes between points and maybe more if I wasn't able to hit a repeater at all on any given transmission.

I'm also trying to work out why someone operating on a Mac can't see the map. However, I don't have a Mac to work with, so I would appreciate a detailed description of everything those using Mac's are doing and the results via e-mail. Include what you are using to surf the web and such and I'll see what I can do to get it worked out.