[pct-l] Emergency Devices

[Paul Robison]

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




________________________________
From: Gary Wright <gwtmp01 at mac.com>
To: ned at mountaineducation.org
Cc: pct-l at backcountry.net
Sent: Tue, November 30, 2010 1:58:48 PM
Subject: Re: [pct-l] Emergency Devices


On Nov 30, 2010, at 1:03 PM, ned at mountaineducation.org wrote:

> Just keep in mind that any true emergency will take longer to activate via a 
> SPOT than a sat phone or PLB. According to the Air Force Captain (these are 
> the guys that watch the whole country for emergency beacons) who taught a 
> National Response Course I attended a few weeks ago, the best way to get 
> help right now is via the PLB or sat phone.

Just out of curiosity, who exactly would you call on a sat phone in an 
emergency?  Does 911 get routed to some sort of national dispatch group or would 
you have to have with you a Search and Rescue phone number to call?  Do sat 
phones incorporate automatic location tracking in some way or do you have to be 
able to verbally communicate your location accurately?

I just recall several discussions on this list about the difficulty in finding 
the correct jurisdiction for a search and rescue on the trail.

Radar
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