SPOT Satellite Messenger

Saw this at the end of my AOPA magazine this month:

http://www.findmespot.com/

Besides being a cheap insurance policy, I love the idea of nagging my
friends via email of my soaring adventures. Some adventure races have
the same type of email notification systems for participants to allow
friends to follow the racer's progress.

Just a bit too late for my Christmas list...

-bob

Hi,

I believe Tom Serkowski (5Z) is flying with one in Colorado. He has posted
information about it here recently. I recommend that you do a search of
this newsgroup for the details.

Merry Christmas,

Paul Remde

wrote in message
...
Saw this at the end of my AOPA magazine this month:

http://www.findmespot.com/

Besides being a cheap insurance policy, I love the idea of nagging my
friends via email of my soaring adventures. Some adventure races have
the same type of email notification systems for participants to allow
friends to follow the racer's progress.

Just a bit too late for my Christmas list...

-bob

Paul Remde wrote:
Hi,

I believe Tom Serkowski (5Z) is flying with one in Colorado. He has posted
information about it here recently. I recommend that you do a search of
this newsgroup for the details.

And a less specific search will yield several airplane newsgroups, where
you'll find the pilots have jumped on this product with great glee. I'm
sure the interest in Spot will increase greatly by March among glider
pilots in the Northern Hemisphere.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly
* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

Eric Greenwell wrote:
Paul Remde wrote:
Hi,

I believe Tom Serkowski (5Z) is flying with one in Colorado. He has
posted information about it here recently. I recommend that you do a
search of this newsgroup for the details.

And a less specific search will yield several airplane newsgroups, where
you'll find the pilots have jumped on this product with great glee. I'm
sure the interest in Spot will increase greatly by March among glider
pilots in the Northern Hemisphere.


As well as I can tell, you presently can only track one plane at a time.
If that changes, a gliderport could have a screen showing the location
of all pilots flying that day.

I have a SPOT and I've played with it a little. I'll write up more on
my blog when I have time.

First to bring it down to reality, and deflate some misconceptions
about these.... "Track" as in thinking of seeing things on a map is a
generous description. There is no real time tracking as most people
would think of this. You can log into the user account select a list
of data points and choose to have the plotted on a Google map. There
is no real time update of new data arriving onto a map. The web site
was also logging you out with very short session expiry time, I've
reported this and they said they would look at it. There is no way to
see multiple messengers on one map or from within one account. The
only access to a map and raw tracking data is if the owner of the SPOT
messenger gives you access to their SPOT login account which is a
little cumbersome and you won't want to share this widely. Data
reporting points in tracking mode are about 10 minutes apart.

Lithium AAA batteries should last a few days in typical use, I've not
tried Alkaline, which will apparently work, obviously with much
shorter life, even if the manufacture says not to. No way to connect
to an external power source, but jury rigging power does not look too
hard. Getting the thing into track mode involves holding down a button
for a long time, but without any clear indication it has gone into
this mode vs. just going to send one message.

Pressing the "911" or "Help" buttons may not get a message out before
you crash and could apparently take 10-20 mins to get out, so you hope
in a bad situation that the device has a view of the sky post crash.
Device usability could do with some help in a next gen, web site is
hokey and primitive, I could not get the SMS messaging to work to my
AT&T phone but need to play more. Email worked fine for manual
position reports. You can't send a manual position report and have
automatic tracking on - so if you crew is out in the field and does
not have web access they can't get your location from automatic
position reports. Tracking has to be reactivated each 24 hours eve if
the device is left on. In club situations etc. it will be very easy
for people to not have these turned on to automatically track. It
looks like the tracking feature is an afterthought in several ways
which is a pity.

I strongly believe these are not replacements for a 406MHz PLB/ELT
(which I carry on my parachute harness already) if the crapola really
hits the fan I want an alert going to SARSAT and able to be homed into
by CAP and others. (It is disconcerting how little SAR related
information you are asked to provide to them, the NOAA forms for a
406MHz PLB/ELT have basic usage and SAR contact info, which is at
least reassuring. SPOT just has some names and telephone numbers for
them to try to contact. There appears no standard way to provide their
coordination center provider with your N-number etc., an apparently
silly oversite. A few simple text sentences kept in their database
could be very useful.).

OK that's the bad stuff overstated enough, otherwise it seems to
actually work and once you understand the limitations I believe these
devices have lots of potential. I'll wait and see how they really work
after a few months of serious flying in spring. I'll be using mine
especially when flying out of gliderports where the FBO has internet
access and can track me and I'll take any backup position/signaling
device I can flying in remote places like the CA/NV/UT great basin.


Darryl

On Dec 24, 9:07 pm, Greg Arnold wrote:
Eric Greenwell wrote:
Paul Remde wrote:
Hi,

I believe Tom Serkowski (5Z) is flying with one in Colorado. He has
posted information about it here recently. I recommend that you do a
search of this newsgroup for the details.

And a less specific search will yield several airplane newsgroups, where
you'll find the pilots have jumped on this product with great glee. I'm
sure the interest in Spot will increase greatly by March among glider
pilots in the Northern Hemisphere.

As well as I can tell, you presently can only track one plane at a time.
If that changes, a gliderport could have a screen showing the location
of all pilots flying that day.

On Dec 24, 11:33 pm, "
wrote:
[snip]
Lithium AAA batteries should last a few days in typical use, I've not
tried Alkaline, which will apparently work, obviously with much
shorter life, even if the manufacture says not to. No way to connect
to an external power source, but jury rigging power does not look too
hard. Getting the thing into track mode involves holding down a button
for a long time, but without any clear indication it has gone into
this mode vs. just going to send one message.
[snip]

Sorry that was a typo, the spot uses AA not AAA batteries. BTW there
is lots of space inside the case that they could have added four AA
batteries for very long life on Lithium or a reasonable life on
Alkaline. I suspect they went with Lithium for the long shelf life as
they see the device more as a PLB -- where as I am more interested in
it as a real-time tracking device. So things like external power would
be much more interesting for tracking, not nearly as interesting for a
PLB. External power (and ability to track without needing to reenable
this every 24 hours) might also get them into competing with more
expensive asset tracking solutions from Globalstar partners which they
probably want to avoid for business reasons.

Oh and another limitation - the SPOT messenger is incapable of
reporting altitude, the data is just not transmitted by the messenger
and their support folks have told me there is no way that this can be
changed. This is a pity as altitude could give you a clue how well
folks are doing in many situations.

Darryl