matt s
Explorer
Spot - First impressions
My parents and my wife got me a spot and 1 year of service (including the route tracking or breadcrumb feature) for my birthday. Pretty cool gift, and a total surprise ( no cobb grill, oh well maybe next time ).
My first impressions are that this thing is really more useful than I imagined. I used the tracking feature on a flight with my dad to go fishing yesterday. The spot plotted my route at 10 minute intervals to an online map in real time. My wife and my mother knew where we were in route and when we were on our way home. We were well out of cell coverage so this was a nice little comfort for them.
It did get me thinking that the breadcrumb feature is really the key. In fact without that feature I think the general usefulness of the unit would be far reduced. For instance, were we to go down or have some other accident we may or may not have been able to activate the SOS. But since I was using the breadcrumb feature searchers would have access to our last known coords and provided the unit survived the wreck would have continued transmission of our location.
Of course none of that is a substitute for normal procedures like letting someone know where you are going and at what point to consider you overdue and send out the calvary.
I have 2M and 70cm Ham comms in my rig and hope to include HF in the future. However I think these radios and spot play different roles and each have their strengths and weaknesses.
Just thought I would give a first impression post for those who might be looking into one.
My parents and my wife got me a spot and 1 year of service (including the route tracking or breadcrumb feature) for my birthday. Pretty cool gift, and a total surprise ( no cobb grill, oh well maybe next time ).
My first impressions are that this thing is really more useful than I imagined. I used the tracking feature on a flight with my dad to go fishing yesterday. The spot plotted my route at 10 minute intervals to an online map in real time. My wife and my mother knew where we were in route and when we were on our way home. We were well out of cell coverage so this was a nice little comfort for them.
It did get me thinking that the breadcrumb feature is really the key. In fact without that feature I think the general usefulness of the unit would be far reduced. For instance, were we to go down or have some other accident we may or may not have been able to activate the SOS. But since I was using the breadcrumb feature searchers would have access to our last known coords and provided the unit survived the wreck would have continued transmission of our location.
Of course none of that is a substitute for normal procedures like letting someone know where you are going and at what point to consider you overdue and send out the calvary.
I have 2M and 70cm Ham comms in my rig and hope to include HF in the future. However I think these radios and spot play different roles and each have their strengths and weaknesses.
Just thought I would give a first impression post for those who might be looking into one.
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