I want to upgrade to the SPOT Gen 3 & looking for some pilot reviews. My main question is if I'm flying in smooth air is the vibration from the engine enough to keep the Motion Activated Tracking On?

I've been wondering the same thing.

Here's what SPOT has to say:
"SPOT Gen3's customized tracking features take your SPOT experience to the next level. Only with SPOT Gen3, is tracking motion-activated regardless of the level of tracking you choose (Basic, Unlimited or Extreme). A vibration sensor tells your SPOT to send track updates when you are moving and to stop when you do. This is a great new battery-saving feature!
Motion Activated Tracking: now your SPOT knows when you’re moving and when you stop to make camp. When SPOT Gen3 senses you’ve stopped for an extended period of time it will stop sending track messages until you start moving again."

My brother borrowed my SPOT Gen2 on a hike through the Bailey Range. One evening when setting up camp he forgot to turn it off. So for an hour it transmitted 5 tracks in the same spot....pun intended. When you look at the bread crumb trail on Google Maps there's a blob of tracks in the same place where he made camp. The way I understand the SPOT Gen3 its suppose to fix that.
So I imagine flying along with a Gen 3 sitting stationary in your cockpit where the vibration sensor gets no input. The SPOT's GPS still senses forward motion of the plane and will continue leaving a bread crumb trail. Of course this is purely speculation on my part.

Can anybody confirm this?

Sam

SkylaneSam wrote:I've been wondering the same thing.

Here's what SPOT has to say:
"SPOT Gen3's customized tracking features take your SPOT experience to the next level. Only with SPOT Gen3, is tracking motion-activated regardless of the level of tracking you choose (Basic, Unlimited or Extreme). A vibration sensor tells your SPOT to send track updates when you are moving and to stop when you do. This is a great new battery-saving feature!
Motion Activated Tracking: now your SPOT knows when you’re moving and when you stop to make camp. When SPOT Gen3 senses you’ve stopped for an extended period of time it will stop sending track messages until you start moving again."

I don't have a spot to confirm, but I agree with your supposition that it probably works as you describe. That said, the accelerometers that are in the spot certainly could be sensitive enough to work by themselves. Straight and level in smooth skies still has a lot of vibration that the spot could use to decide things are still moving. It just seems silly though. If the thing is sitting in a truck that is idling overnight, if spot isn't using the actual gps info to decide it's stopped then they will still send updates.

I have used my Spot Gen3 now for about 40 hours, 30 in the plane. I can confirm that it does continue tracking even during straight, level, and smooth flight. The motion sensing seems to work really well from my experience, does just what it should. When the plane is parked, it stops transmitting until it starts moving again.

It is sounding better all the time, but does it reliably work a very high percentage of the time?
This question includes that does the website display predictably and reasonably reliably on all the designated platforms??

How about a poll on this, Zane?
Maybe the simplest would be a satisfaction index, and a "would you buy it again" question....?

....or whatever....
lc

My data shows that in 32 hours of flying over about 2700 miles of the country with tracking on the entire time, my Spot Gen3 missed two data points (5 minute tracking intervals). I believe tracking messages are the lowest priority and are only transmitted once. The higher priority messages (OK, Help, SOS) are transmitted 3 times.