On Saturday, March 29, 2014 11:51:13 AM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:
On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:11:24 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:



Do you have any actual proof that Spot was actuated in this incident? I checked my spot last month (tracking & OK functions) and it worked just fine..



Otherwise, you are just spreading rumors...



Kirk

66

Kirk, I understand the concern about rumors, but actually posting that article was a nice service for folks. Lots of good stuff to ponder behind this accident. Links were in that article and its trivial to find the pretty thorough report on this accident by US Sailing here... http://offshore.ussailing.org/AssetF...aspx?vid=19623

And yes it is absolutely accepted that the Spot SOS messages was sent, and more importantly was received (there is no way to know with Spot somebody tried to do anything unless a Globalstar satellite happen to receive the message).

As with many aircraft accident reports, reading that US Sailing report is a combination of sadness and frustration. Competing in an off-shore ocean race, no EPIRB, no life raft, a suspected failure to have (or failure of) a deck watch. Yes I know the family were/are upset with he report but there just is a lot wrong with the equipment level and action of this crew.

And there *is* also a lot wrong with how Globalstar/SPOT positions their devices and the SOS service. It frustrates me how Globalstar/SPOT seems to deliberately obfuscate the simplex nature of the service. e.g. I've seen users read the current v3 manual and be convinced the message LED going off means "message received". there is no excuse for that sort of marketing fluff when peoples' lives are potentially at risk. And the whole SOS service is overhyped.

Spot, and now InReach, are fantastic innovative tracking devices. Just wonderful innovation and likely better than an impact activated ELT for lots of reasons. But when the stuff really hits the fan I'd still want a EPIRB in a marine situation or a PLB (actually not an impact activated ELT) in a glider. Actually I want both an InReach and a PLB. The InReach tracking and 2 way messaging are fantastic. And when you really screw up and need a real rescue then the PLB helps SAR get to you. The 406MHz EPIRB/PLB/ELT get you straight to the NOAA/USAF/Coast Guard SAR coordination folks and at the other extreme the 121.5Mhz beacons they all still contain provide SAR teams with a local homing signal.

So I'd hope the sailing community learns by the mistakes made here, but on the other hand I'd hope the litigation at least chilled some of the marketing hype, from Spot and others in this space. And for the gliding community with all these SPOT and InReach trackers I hope all the pilots and crews and family of pilots etc. are lookign out for the pilots. Everybody understands the product capabilities, what different messages exactly mean, who/how to escalate concern to, etc. (which county is the glider in, what's that county sheriff's phone number... etc.) if you've not had that detailed discussion, and better yet left written instructions, now may be a good time to do that.


Darryl