RaDAR Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio encourages combining physical activity with amateur radio. Sadly, exercise has not been a habit with me other than walking Suzy on weekends. I have been able to do the one kilometer walks during the RaDAR Challenge, but pulling the cart was taxing.
Now enter the Fitbit Ionic Watch. It was my Christmas gift from Linda. The watch puts much of the Fitbit technology on your wrist. It tracks steps and measures your heart rate. It also has a built-in GPS. There are apps that measure your exercise. It can do this without your smartphone but it does sync with my android phone. That is where the statistics are available.
The Fitbit tracks your daily steps and encourages you to set goals and do more. It expects me to do 250 steps each hour between 9 AM and 6 PM. I have to get out of my chair at work to make that happen. It gives me credit for walking up stairs and general activity. Packing up for Winter Field Day showed up as an activity.
The American Heart Association recommends 10K steps per day. My normal steps per day would be around 3K. However, by doing two 10 minute and one 15 minute walk at work I am getting up around 7K. This should pay off on the RaDAR Challenge as I am improving my one-kilometer pace. I did get 10K steps once at a rocket launch.
The walk exercise app lets me know when I have reached a kilometer. My exercise path is recorded by the watch GPS. I can review it later on my watch or PC. This will be handy for the RaDAR Challenge. Oh yes, the watch can play MP3 files through Bluetooth earbuds. I have some code practice files in mine.
