[pct-l] Emergency Devices

[Paul Robison]

Dan,

You're absolutely right accd to the websight,  this is very opposite to what the 
REI employee selling the spot told me.

i'd much sooner believe the websight over an REI employee, i just never bothered 
to check.

~Paul




________________________________
From: Dan Kronstadt <subs at kronhead.com>
To: pct-l at backcountry.net
Sent: Wed, December 1, 2010 1:21:18 AM
Subject: Re: [pct-l] Emergency Devices

Paul - last I read, Spot used the private Globalstar satellite network, 
while PLB's use COSPAS-SARSAT satellites (http://bit.ly/hfKoXU). And my 
understanding was the Globalstar was heavily used by truckers, etc. Is 
that not accurate?

On the other hand, something I read pointed out that a PLB cannot be 
fully tested. As I remember, you can do some testing that is limited in 
function and # of tests - but the Spot gets tested every day you use it 
for tracking, messages to family, etc.

Dan

On 11/30/2010 11:12 AM, Paul Robison wrote:
> in this case,
>
> a call is placed to the SPOT call center with your GPS coordinates, from there 
>a
> human determines who to call,  police, SAR, coast guard, etc.  and will get to
> the right agency to help you.
> if your GPS coordinates cannot be acquired  (you're in a dense forest 
perhaps),
> the satelite call is still placed and a human at SPOT will go through your
> history and try and find your heading and approx. location.
> a call center employee calls yoru family to apprise them of the situation as
> well as determine any more itinerary info, as well as descriptions.
>
> to be clear the SPOT calls use the EXACT SAME satelites as SAR and PLB
> satelites.  only difference is they are not given priority above SAR or PLB in
> the event all lines are busy.  this comes essentially as a TXT message and 
uses
> virtually no bandwidth.
>
> ~Paul
>
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