On Jan 3, 4:34 pm, 5Z wrote:
On Jan 3, 1:23 pm, chris wrote:

I wonder how hard it would be to do a DIY SPOT tracker.
Use a cell phone/Blackberry with built in GPS or one with a blue tooth
GPS connection.

As long as you're soaring in metro areas or along busy roads, that
would work just fine. Check out the thread about analog mobile
service going away in a month (in the USA).

There's also some good Ham radio solutions out there.

The beauty of SPOT is that it's using satellites for both positioning
and uplinking the information, so no need for an ground based
infrastructure. And it's relatively inexpensive.

-Tom

I know about the weak cell coverage in many areas. Getting a phone
call through is tough in many places. Getting a rather low bandwidth
SMS text message through is easier in Many places. [how much better I
don't know] I don't know if altitude would help reach more antennas
but it may also help.
Just thinking it might be good enough in some places, though certainly
not as good as satellite coverage.

Chris