SPOT User Survey - Altitude?

All,
So in some of the recent discussions with SPOT about their upcoming
products, they tell me that they have indeed surveyed their users
about whether they would like to have altitude outputted. They have
not (yet) told me how much extra it would have cost, but they said
that the majority of users they surveyed were not willing to pay any
extra to have altitude outputted by their devices. They said that
while the "hangliders" have been passionate about it, that there
hasn't been a large enough group of users who said they were willing
to pay an additional amount to justify the additional bandwidth
usage.

So the purpose of this posting is to ask if any of the users on this
newgroups anywhere in the world have EVER been survey'd by SPOT or an
affiliated organization ANYTHING related to the addition altitude to
the information outputted by a SPOT device. If you have, please let
me know. My guess is that there won't be anyone on here that has ever
been asked. I'm hoping to try to get something posted somewhere on
the AOPA site with a similar question to see what the response there
is as well. I will also ask some of our more active paraglider
buddies as well. I will also push back a little on any proposed
pricing they might have considered. Since I don't know that, please
also let me know if you would be willing to pay say (I'm making this
up) $5 extra a year to have altitude outputted from your device and
available on your shared page?

Armed with some of this feedback, I hope to push back a bit more in
hopes of trying to get altitude output onto the plate for the next
version of SPOT.

Thanks in advance!!

-Mark

On Aug 5, 9:27*pm, MarkHawke7 wrote:
So the purpose of this posting is to ask if any of the users on this
newgroups anywhere in the world have EVER been survey'd by SPOT or an
affiliated organization ANYTHING related to the addition altitude to
the information outputted by a SPOT device.

I responded to a survey several months ago. It had no specific
questions on altitude reporting but I found a place where I could make
a free form comment and requested altitude be added to the tracking
reports.

Andy

On Aug 5, 8:37*pm, Andy wrote:
On Aug 5, 9:27*pm, MarkHawke7 wrote:

So the purpose of this posting is to ask if any of the users on this
newgroups anywhere in the world have EVER been survey'd by SPOT or an
affiliated organization ANYTHING related to the addition altitude to
the information outputted by a SPOT device.

I responded to a survey several months ago. It had no specific
questions on altitude reporting but I found a place where I could make
a free form comment and requested altitude be added to the tracking
reports.

Andy

I did the same. The 'survey' seemed more like a fishing expedition
for numbers to claim in advertisements.

I completed the survey a while ago, hoping our feedback would count.
But the flying community is a small percentage of users. For most
users, ground elevation is all they need.
If anyone wants more coverage area, better reliability, more frequent
message rate, with altitude, direction and speed information, they can
get it from other (and more expensive) providers.
Lets see if at least the version 2 unit gets messages out closer to
the every 10 minutes they claim. I'm more concerned with the frequent
gaps in message reception. Unless there are multiple messages at the
same location, a good assumption would be "still flying".
Jim

MarkHawke7 wrote:
All,
So in some of the recent discussions with SPOT about their upcoming
products, they tell me that they have indeed surveyed their users
about whether they would like to have altitude outputted. They have
not (yet) told me how much extra it would have cost, but they said
that the majority of users they surveyed were not willing to pay any
extra to have altitude outputted by their devices. They said that
while the "hangliders" have been passionate about it, that there
hasn't been a large enough group of users who said they were willing
to pay an additional amount to justify the additional bandwidth
usage.

A few months ago, I answered a survey from SPOT that had several
specific questions about altitude information and the additional price
I'd be willing to pay. I think I said something like $25/year.

Glider pilots, maybe balloon pilots, live on altitude, but I can't
imagine ground-based users having the slightest interest in altitude,
and I doubt airplane pilots care much, either, since they tend to fly at
constant altitudes. Perhaps they could offer to replace OK message with
the altitude, and do it without extra charge, since it would not be
adding any extra bits to the message. You'd have to press the OK button
every now and then, of course.

Eric Greenwell

On Aug 5, 10:44*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
MarkHawke7 wrote:
All,
So in some of the recent discussions with SPOT about their upcoming
products, they tell me that they have indeed surveyed their users
about whether they would like to have altitude outputted. *They have
not (yet) told me how much extra it would have cost, but they said
that the majority of users they surveyed were not willing to pay any
extra to have altitude outputted by their devices. *They said that
while the "hangliders" have been passionate about it, that there
hasn't been a large enough group of users who said they were willing
to pay an additional amount to justify the additional bandwidth
usage.

A few months ago, I answered a survey from SPOT that had several
specific questions about altitude information and the additional price
I'd be willing to pay. I think I said something like $25/year.

Glider pilots, maybe balloon pilots, live on altitude, but I can't
imagine ground-based users having the slightest interest in altitude,
and I doubt airplane pilots care much, either, since they tend to fly at
constant altitudes. Perhaps they could offer to replace OK message with
the altitude, and do it without extra charge, since it would not be
adding any extra bits to the message. You'd have to press the OK button
every now and then, of course.

Eric Greenwell

Although altitude reporting would be very useful for contest
situations, it's not a priority for me. I place my SPOT on top of my
instrument pod, and with rare exception, get tracking message through
every 10 minutes. Not that things couldn't be improved, but for
roughly $13.00 a month, my crew can always find me. That's worth
every penny.

On Aug 5, 10:44*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
MarkHawke7 wrote:
All,
So in some of the recent discussions with SPOT about their upcoming
products, they tell me that they have indeed surveyed their users
about whether they would like to have altitude outputted. *They have
not (yet) told me how much extra it would have cost, but they said
that the majority of users they surveyed were not willing to pay any
extra to have altitude outputted by their devices. *They said that
while the "hangliders" have been passionate about it, that there
hasn't been a large enough group of users who said they were willing
to pay an additional amount to justify the additional bandwidth
usage.

A few months ago, I answered a survey from SPOT that had several
specific questions about altitude information and the additional price
I'd be willing to pay. I think I said something like $25/year.

Glider pilots, maybe balloon pilots, live on altitude, but I can't
imagine ground-based users having the slightest interest in altitude,
and I doubt airplane pilots care much, either, since they tend to fly at
constant altitudes. Perhaps they could offer to replace OK message with
the altitude, and do it without extra charge, since it would not be
adding any extra bits to the message. You'd have to press the OK button
every now and then, of course.

Eric Greenwell

I'm not too concerned with altitude. As long as my wife can see that
I'm ok and can be found if help is needed I'm happy with it.

Jim Dingess

to pay an additional amount to justify the additional bandwidth
usage.

-Mark


Additional bandwidth usage? I don't get it. We're talking about the
message that gets sent from the Spot unit through the satellite,
right? How can one additional data element constitute "additional
bandwidth"?

As long as the Spot unit itself if capable of determining it's
altitude, I would think the only change required is a software update
and the message protocol for transmit and receive via the satellite.
An extra couple of bytes of data in the message doesn't seem like it
should be a big deal.

What am I missing?

When I right click on a message, there's an option called show
altitude profile. When clicked a plot of altitude vs distance is
plotted. Anyone else seen this?

Kathy

On Aug 6, 10:31*am, Kathy wrote:
When I right click on a message, there's an option called show
altitude profile. When clicked a plot of altitude vs distance is
plotted. *Anyone else seen this?


Kathy

That is meaningless local terrain altitude.

Darryl