>>Hockey-pucks that know how to send Iridium sat phone SMSs Not Iridium last time I looked. In fact, I think that Spot uses something like Globalstar sats which were failing all over the place some years ago. They released Spot which has nowhere near the requirements of a sat phone in terms of reliability and this restarted the company… to the extent that they rebranded as Spot and forgot the ordure behind them. Or that was what I read last year.
Spot is fairly OK if you don't need a reliable tracker. It's OK if all you want to do is send a help message from time to time and don't really mind if it gets through. It probably will and the device will let you know if it fails. However there are more than a few holes in the global coverage for Spot and my experience in the outback was not great. Their website was not too hot either. InReach is something else again. I got mine because I was going somewhere which was hundreds of km from the nearest phone network and way out of range of VHF etc. It was the only reliable solution because Spot did not work because of their coverage holes. The main advantage is the ability to send SMS messages of any type. In fact, overseas, an InReach SMS is cheaper than Telstra thought that's not a surprise. InReach does use Iridium which is claimed to be the only one with proper Global coverage. The InReach website is excellent and stores tracks for ages, unlike Spot where they disappear over a week. The InReach is powered by a rechargeable battery with 100 hours duration. Because of the proper screen, you can see battery charge level, tracking, messages etc. Unlike Spot where it just goes flat on you. In fact, you don't really do much with the InReach because it can be linked with a phone or iPad and controlled entirely through that. So all you do is turn it on, check and then fly. The only real drawback in remote area flying with a ground crew is that in most cases, people on the ground will have worse phone reception than you in the air so you can send a sat SMS with the InReach but the people on the ground may not get it until they're in a town. So you either need two or the person in the car gets it. For a lot of remote area flying, I think that the InReach is the most likely tracker and I would rely on it a lot more than a mobile phone. Sure, for local area flying, phones are OK. Otherwise a brilliant tool. If you get it registered in the USA, the prices are very reasonable, and not much more than Spot. D _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
