Which PLB?

On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 10:02:20 AM UTC-7, Soartech wrote:
PLBs do ONE THING extremely well, but they do not supersede SPOT/INREACH.



Good observation. It won't be long before someone sees the advantage of this and comes up with a device that does BOTH.

I'll wait for that one.

Perfect is the Enemy of Good.

These PLBs and tracking devices cost a few hundred bucks, a few launches, an aero retreive or two, a couple of nice dinners out. By all means do an evaluation of your own risks and needs and buy whatever is appropriate, and that might be both. But waiting around for a device that does everything is unlikely to help anybody.

And in this case a combo device may be worse than two separate devices.

Waiting until somebody sees any advantage? That is not the issue, you think every vendor in this space does not fully understand the competing technology and have done so for years. And it has not happened yet. So maybe run the thought experiment and ask why.

Maybe more likely each vendor is worried their devices (e.g. PLB/tracker purchased at Amazon, REI etc.) are more impulse buys/purchased by not so sophisticated consumers who really don't know what much about what they are buying and therefore trying to explain these issues and justify a more expensive device is a marketing challenge they may not want to get into. And once a vendor does a combo device they are publicizing weaknesses in their standard devices. And batteries are going to be an issue. A manufacturer has to meet demanding PLB battery/shelf life/operating time specs and also allow a user to run down the device while using it for tracking. So two separate battery packs? One primary for the PLB and one rechargeable for the tracker? How much larger than the standard device can this be... give that batteries are a significant part of many of these products volume.

The redundancy of having two separate devices, with two separate battery packs, that signal distress/provide tracking by two entirely different means is a huge selling point in my book, much preferable if you are doing more extreme things than having a single device. And I want a PLB strapped to my harness, the tracking and some of the advanced two-way messaging features of an InReach may work better if the device is mounted in front of you on the glider not your parachute harness.

Darryl