Steve Koerner wrote:
My point seems to be missed... You can choose the Aviation 1 plan for
InReach and pay quite close to the same as you do for Spot's contract.
You then have a vastly better gadget that is producing more interesting
and useful data points every 10 minutes and provides 2-way arbitrary
messaging and it does not cost more for the service contract.

The idea that InReach costs more is only for guys like Sean that want the
high sampling rate. You don't have to set a high sampling rate -- you
can set it at 10 minutes. It seems to me that there's actually no
rationale for Spot except that you may want to keep it until your Spot
contract runs out. And, be careful on that sco Spot is setup to
automatically renew unless you notify.

There's a one time cost to upgrade, of course, but that doesn't count.

I agree with Steve and Sean. The InReach is a far superior service at an
equivalent cost to Spot and an immeasurably superior service if you are
willing to pay a bit more for a faster tracking interval that isn't
available for Spot - but you don't have to pay more if you don't want to.
They even have the option to upgrade your plan for the peak season.

I believe the faster sampling combined with altitude info and superior
reporting reliability would make it possible to generate real-time
estimates of task speeds, rankings and scores for all InReach-equipped
gliders in a contest. Could be pretty interesting.
--
9B