Just picked up one of these, trying to decide which plan to get, and whether to do the annual contract (lower monthly price) or the freedom (higher price, but flexibility to suspend service when you don't need it.) I see there is an option on their service activation website to enter a promo code, does anyone know of any?

Also was it supposed to come with a belt clip? There is a place for it, but none in the box.

bushpilot490 wrote:Just picked up one of these, trying to decide which plan to get, and whether to do the annual contract (lower monthly price) or the freedom (higher price, but flexibility to suspend service when you don't need it.) I see there is an option on their service activation website to enter a promo code, does anyone know of any?

Also was it supposed to come with a belt clip? There is a place for it, but none in the box.

I got the $25 a month plan, but really don't like micromanaging things, so having a plan that's always on and includes everything I'm likely to use was appealing to me. Could I have saved a few dollars with another plan? Dunno. But in the 30 seconds I spent spitballing it, it would have been just that, a few dollars. Maybe 25-50 over the course of the year. That's not worth trying to manage for me.

Belt clip: yup. Should have been there. I use mine to clip it to the mic hook in the maule. Then it's super handy in case of an emergency and has a clear view of the sky. Has, thus far, worked out perfectly.

bushpilot490 wrote:Just picked up one of these, trying to decide which plan to get, and whether to do the annual contract (lower monthly price) or the freedom (higher price, but flexibility to suspend service when you don't need it.) I see there is an option on their service activation website to enter a promo code, does anyone know of any?

Also was it supposed to come with a belt clip? There is a place for it, but none in the box.

This is likely to come across as harsh but it is not my intent so I apologize ahead of time.

If "suspend service when you don't need it" is because you aren't going to fly your plane for a few months, and your not going off hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, rafting where you should be taking the inReach since you already own it - then I could see where the freedom plan might be a good option.

But if you meant I'll only be using it when I fly to the boonies - well then I think that is a big mistake to save pennies, and if you can afford to fly a plane you can afford to make it as easiest as possible for your family to come get your body should you crash.

I own an inReach, have an annual contract, and generally turned it on only when taking a trip or going off airport. That is until last Saturday when my friend Hank was killed.

He crashed ONE MINUTE (in a hundred mph club type plane) from 88R, my home airport, which is in the Hill Country of Texas thirty miles west of Austin. Certainly not remote like the mountains of Idaho or Alaska. He crashed on a ranch that had just been sold and had yet to be occupied, and in a portion of the ranch that was best accessed by 4WD. Had his crash not resulted in a brush fire we would still be looking for him. He took off early Saturday morning for his weekly weekend cool morning fun flight. Sometimes he went West, sometimes North, sometimes East, and sometimes South.

When I launched to try and find him no one had any idea which way he headed or where he was going. I realized that he could be anywhere within a 100 mile radius of his home airport, that's a huge area. As I type this I can't help but think of what Hank's family would be going through right now had there not been the fire. I sure don't want to put my wife, kids or friends through that.

I've always had a mount for the inReach in both the 185 and the SQ-2, and both have been wired to supply external power to the inReach. So now I've gone into "Settings" and set up the inReach to auto turn on when it senses external power. I still have to remember to activate tracking but I am requesting that an auto-tracking select feature be added.

Oh, the belt clip is probably all ready on the back of the inReach, it's very low profile.

I have the Recreation plan. Given all the incidents we've heard about recently on the news/BCP, I want something I can turn on and not have to worry about tracking point usage or activation. I never know when the next adventure will be, so it's most practical for me to keep the plan activated all the time, so I'm not tempted to fly on a short flight w/o reactivating it.

The Recreation Plan includes 40 text messages, unlimited Preset messages, unlimited tracking, and unlimited SOS. As I have said in the past, it's a great little unit and has been very reliable and informative for the people who track me.

Alec

Barnstormer wrote:He crashed ONE MINUTE (in a hundred mph club type plane) from 88R, my home airport, which is in the Hill Country of Texas thirty miles west of Austin. Certainly not remote like the mountains of Idaho or Alaska. He crashed on a ranch that had just been sold and had yet to be occupied, and in a portion of the ranch that was best accessed by 4WD. Had his crash not resulted in a brush fire we would still be looking for him. He took off early Saturday morning for his weekly weekend cool morning fun flight. Sometimes he went West, sometimes North, sometimes East, and sometimes South.

I have been unpacking at the new place for a while now and was walking around my house last night when it dawned on me.

My InReach has been laying face down on the floor in a pile of shit beside my computer for three weeks now. I fly my airplane at least two or three times a week. My flights range from a single lap around the pattern to jaunts off in every which direction. One of my favorite play areas is a 60,000 acre reclaimed strip mine property. I typically just send a text to my girlfriend that says something like- "Hey, just going up for a quick flight, text you when I land." Or something of the like. But truth be known, I may think I'm going one way when I get up, and then I go fly somewhere else.

Another thing about my airplane is that it is so quiet, I could probably land in your backyard, and unless I took off again, you would never know that I was even there. There is an area less than a quarter mile from my strip that if I crashed there, with the tree cover that is there, spotting wreckage would be difficult to say the least, and if you didn't see me crash, you probably wouldn't hear me either.

I am paying for the service on the monthly plan since my trip to Idaho and like Phil said, It's cheap insurance (Less than an hour of fuel burn per hour) per month. So, pay attention to my InReach link, and see where I am!

Agreed. I just purchased the annual, recreation plan.

Pardon my ignorance and laziness but what is the difference between the DeLorme and the Spot?
I just had a 406 elt installed even though most of my flying will be in relatively populated areas of Texas. I just couldn't get my head wrapped around the fact that I was hauling around a worthless 121.5 elt, so the upgrade made sense.
Please school me on the trackers.

The biggest difference is that the delorme offers two way messaging. The spot is one way.

If you got to SPOT's web page right now you will see that most of Southern Africa is offline. This has been and ongoing issue with SPOT over the past few years where not only can their coverage be "spotty" but their uptime as well.

Copied directly from Delorme's website:
"inReach operates on the Iridium satellite network — the only network that spans the entire globe, offering 100% coverage anywhere on earth. Offering unmatched communications, performance and reliability advantages, Iridium’s 66 low-earth orbiting (LEO) cross-linked satellites – the world’s largest commercial constellation – operate as a fully meshed network that is supported by multiple in-orbit spares."

Ummm, I for one don't fly much in Southern Africa. In fact, since the Ebola panic, I'm just going to stay out of Africa altogether....

Your point has some validity if we're talking about sat phone coverage. But, I've had very good service from my SPOT in the northern US, with at most one dropped track point on a flight.

Now, if you were to crash close to the north side of a tall mountain, the In Reach would be a better deal. If I crash, however, I'll pull the pin on my PLB. Problem solved.

There is no question that the In Reach has more features available than the SPOT has, but you'll pay substantially more for those features.

And, yes, I have an In Reach now as well. I suspect that shortly I will drop that subscription however, but well see.

I simply don't find the additional features that valuable, and the coverage in the lower 48 isn't that much different.

MTV

Any comments on Spider Tracks?

G44

G44 wrote:Any comments on Spider Tracks?

G44

Kurt,

A great system. Disadvantage is it requires ships power....and it's expensive both to purchase and for subscription.

Other than that, however, it's probably the best of these type systems.

MTV

Thanks Mike.

Anyone else have experience with Spider Tracks?

InReach and SpiderTracks are Iridium based. That's the gold standard. If you are considering a purchase for safety reasons, this is what you want. More sats, more reliability, two way messaging with the ability to compose messages in the bush. InReach has a version with a screen, so you can send messages without having to have a mobile phone.

Spot gen3 is GlobalStar based and less reliable. It does retries, so eventually things get delivered, but maybe not until you get over the next hill. This makes it look a bit more reliable than it probably is. Spot has added two way.

It's hard to do an apples to apples comparison, but depending on how you use the devices, InReach will be between zero and ten dollars a month more than Spot3.

Thanks RW2!

Delorme has aviation plans, or what I think are now called enterprise plans. They are based on data usage and not messages or tracking points. I have the #2 plan which includes 3000 bytes, or about 20 hours of flying with a tracker every 2 minutes. Costs me about $30 per month. I go over my usage allowance during the summer months, which is $5 per 1000 bytes. My biggest bill has been $50. Never had a problem with reliability up here in Alaska.

ClimbingProsaria wrote:Delorme has aviation plans, or what I think are now called enterprise plans. They are based on data usage and not messages or tracking points. I have the #2 plan which includes 3000 bytes, or about 20 hours of flying with a tracker every 2 minutes. Costs me about $30 per month. I go over my usage allowance during the summer months, which is $5 per 1000 bytes. My biggest bill has been $50. Never had a problem with reliability up here in Alaska.

They don't have any plan like that listed on their website, maybe you are grandfathered in. The only 2 minute plan they have is $75 a month.

rw2 wrote:
They don't have any plan like that listed on their website, maybe you are grandfathered in. The only 2 minute plan they have is $75 a month.

The link below is the sell sheet for these plans. You have to call them to activate these plans, you can't use the website. They definitely still have and sell them. They just raised the price on these plans last month, I think this is the old price but you get the idea.

http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/delorme/ ... rprise.pdf

MTV
what PLB do you have and if you bought new today .....what would you buy?

ClimbingProsaria wrote:Delorme has aviation plans, or what I think are now called enterprise plans. They are based on data usage and not messages or tracking points. I have the #2 plan which includes 3000 bytes, or about 20 hours of flying with a tracker every 2 minutes. Costs me about $30 per month. I go over my usage allowance during the summer months, which is $5 per 1000 bytes. My biggest bill has been $50. Never had a problem with reliability up here in Alaska.

Thanks for that info. I'm calling in the morning and switching plans to every two minutes.