Re: SPOT - personal locator service

I just returned from a month-long trip to Alaska in a (very) small plane with a friend. We took a Spot locator along both as an emergency device and also to let the folks at home know where we were. It was on at all times while we were in the airplane, in its ten-minute automatic transmission mode. I had given the "sharing" URL to a list of people so they could see our locations each day, superimposed on a map. Here are some comments based on this experience:

1. Although the Spot occasionally missed a ten-minute location now and then, the vast majority of locations were properly sent.
2. Experiments conducted before leaving showed that the Spot needs a very clear view of the sky, even at my Oregon home. That requirement would presumably become even more stringent at more northern latitudes, so the device might not be able to send a useful signal from the ground unless the terrain was flat and relatively unwooded. But it did fine from the aircraft where it had an unrestricted view of the sky.
3. People loved it! I got lots of comments about how much they enjoyed being able to travel along with us and see exactly where we'd been each day.
4. Locations sent to the shared web site are only there for 24 hours, and there's no way to make them last longer. So people wanting to follow along had to check daily. I consider this a shortcoming.
5. The device was still on its first set of batteries at the end of the trip! The manufacturer claims it'll run in the ten-minute auto-send mode for 14 days. I was skeptical, but now I'm a believer.
6. The manufacturer shows reduced to no coverage in northern and western Alaska. But it worked flawlessly out to Nome and back, and as far north in central Alaska and Yukon as Fairbanks and Dawson City.
7. On a few occasions when I wasn't able to contact people by email or phone, and we were at an unexpected location, it was very nice to be able to send and explicit "Ok" message.

It's not a perfect device for all purposes, but I sure got my money's worth out of it. I highly recommend it for anyone making a similar trip.

Roy Lewallen
.

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