I had a friend pick one up the other day... he was raving about it, and of course I was giving him flack for letting his wife strap a LoJack to his butt...
As I walked by them in the local toystore, my wife asked me about getting me a SatPhone for when I'm out on extended trips guiding in the backcountry (all of May, part of June, and all of August this year)... we decided that the cost of Sat airtime didn't justify the peace of mind she would get when I checked in....
We settled on the SPOT as a great compromise. So far I've set it up and am carrying it all over town hitting OK and continually tracking myself. SE Alaska has semi-spotty GPS coverage, with frequent outages (short duration) depending on mountains and other topography. The thing takes a bit to acquire signal, but once it's locked, I get every OK signal and about every other tracking message sent.
My only real gripe is with the website... seems to me, there should be a separate login for my "users" to log in and see progress and messages on the map WITHOUT having access to all of my account and configuration details... just a "sub login" that isn't the master account...
I'm toying with the idea of getting a few more and programming messages that come to me for when I transport hunters into the boonies... we do a lot of remote drop-off hunting in the spring and fall, and it would be nice to have an alternative to a Sat Phone for letting me know they need to be picked up early, or that all is okay and on schedule and plan.
Here in Alaska, without our VHF Marine Operator service, there is little means of communicating with home anymore. SPOT is a great compromise between not knowing, and carrying a phone at $250+ per week. It's also nice to have it set up where I can call in an "intermediate" level of help instead of declaring a full on emergency and scrambling the Coast Guard. I've got my "help" button set to send SMS and eMail to my 4 friends with large boats...
-Case
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