[pct-l] Personal Locator Beacons

[Edward Anderson]

Hi Sheepdog,

I have read your post and the excellent attached S&R article with great interest. Your experience ( - - - transmission didn't go through only once or twice the entire 6 months we were on the trail) with the reliability of your SPOT OK messages was similar to mine. During four seasons, I rode the PCT from Mexico to Canada - I can also add up about six months during which I mostly lived on the trail. You must have also been very careful, as I was, in selecting the locations from where you sent your OK messages. All of mine got through, while you only missed one or two during six months! 


My SPOT was the first generation; you must have had the newer one. Mine was given to me free in 2008 by the S. California rep.  The only condition was that I promise to send an OK message every day when I reached camp. They put me on their website, with the words "see where Ed is now". Those interested could follow my daily progress on their computers on Google maps. Those OK messages also gave my wife, loved ones, and friends a certain piece of mind.

As for the locations from which I sent - since I was riding a horse, I naturally sought places where there was some grass for him. Usually that translated into places where there was some OPEN SKY - places where you are likely to find grass growing. And good places to send OK messages. If I couldn't find places like that I simply hiked from camp to find a good location - sometimes it was necessary to walk several hundreds of feet. The criteria that worked for me was to find a "cone" of clear sky of about 45 to 50 degrees. It didn't seem to matter if there was a few leaves encroaching the sky near the perimeter of that cone. The messages still went out. I used lithium batteries and was always very careful that the SPOT was laying in a clear horizontal position with no blades of grass or brush above it. I have read that Tim had sent his 911 emergency message from a less than an ideal location. It got through. When he had a freak and serious accident, he
 was only about seven miles from Canada - having started from the border of Mexico. 


Now, I have read about the smaller and lighter new-generation SPOT - and especially about the new SPOT CONNECT, from which it is possible to send TEXT messages, by connecting it to a Smart Phone. I am aware that many hikers bring along Smart Phones.  The SPOT CONNECT only weighs 4.9 ounces. Worth considering!

MendoRider-Hiker



________________________________
 From: Cari and Pete Tucker <pct2010video at gmail.com>
To: pct-l at backcountry.net 
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2013 8:19 PM
Subject: [pct-l] Personal Locator Beacons
 
The previous respondants are correct that bona fide PLBs have more reliable
transmitters than the SPOT, although my personal experience with SPOT on
the PCT in 2010 was pretty good (we used the OK function every night, and
the transmission didn't go through only once or twice the entire 6 months
we were on trail).

There is a second issue, however, that I think is worth considering when
selecting a SPOT/PLB type device, and that is whether two way text
messaging is possible in an emergency.   The following article
describes the S&R effort mounted to aid four young men on a NOLS trip who
were mauled by a bear in Alaska in 2011.  The group in need of assistance
had, and used, a PLB that put out a simple distress signal with location
information only.  I found the comments of the S&R personnel who handled
this case, quite interesting, particularly their comments about how it is
difficult to judge whether any particluar PLB activation is a life
threatening situation:

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/anatomy-alaska-bear-mauling-rescue

Based on that article, if I were to replace my SPOT, I would definitely
seek out a unit that allows the user to supplement the canned distress
signal with a short messasge describing the specific circumstances of the
emergency at hand. The Delorme inReach in particular seems worthy of
consideration for this reason.

If anyone on the list has had experience with the inReach, I'd be
interested in hearing your thoughts about the unit.

-Sheepdog


> Lets just be clear here, in the end, the SPOT is still a decent
> device. It is just not a true distress radio beacon. The Spot was not
> designed from the ground up to be a PLB/DRB, by an internal national
> group of people assembled to design the world wide network for S&R. I
> do not want to put my life into the hands of something that "might"
> work. I do not want to put my life into the hands of something that
> probably will not work in deep forests or deep canyons and mountains,
> which makes up 95% of where I hike at.
>
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