I spent the better part of 2020 preparing. Ironically, much of that preparation began with a tree hitting my house at the end of April (not even from a severe storm, just a random downburst or something). I got stuck living with my parents again for 7 weeks and since I didn't have my normal toys to keep me occupied, I ended up outfitting my truck for chasing and better railfanning. It's something I've worked a lot on even once I got back in my own house. I have a RaspberryPi3 which chasing-wise will principally serve as an position server, and a 4G router with big external antenna. Meaning I have a GPS puck mounted outside on my antenna rack feeding the Pi, and it in turn can feed anything that connects to GPSD running on it over the network the router manages. I had to write a fair bit of software to do what I needed, and I'm intending to share it all here in another few weeks. One is a script on the Pi that directly updates SpotterNetwork with my position. When I'm not in 4G range, I've been working on a standalone Windows program to intercept APRS packets from the internet and update your SpotterNetwork position, the Pi in the truck runs Direwolf to provide APRS. The final little bit is another Windows program that connects to GPSD and then sends that information over a COM port that I can connect GRLevel3 to. All of this is controlled by a little switch and button box right next to my shifter. All of this is designed so when I get in, I mount my tablet, flick a switch, and push a button and that's it. I don't have to mess with cables other than the tablet's power, and I don't have to fumble with programs other than connecting GR3 to a COM port at the start, everything else through the Pi is headless.
My chase region is basically Georgia south of Atlanta as far as Macon and as far west as Columbus. Given my full-time job, chase days are hard to come by, on top of being rare for the region anyways. I might get one good one each year if I'm real lucky. But this year, thanks to corona and no one having a reason to use days, my company is letting us roll over 10 days instead of the usual 5, then they gave us 3 more as a Christmas bonus of sorts. With my normal three weeks and other days, I have 31 days next year. Even keeping a full set of roll over days, I have more days to mess with than ever before. So if a good event starts setting up, I might actually be able to take the time and go chase!