I just activated my spot yesterday and flew up to boeing field IFR today and brought it with to test it out. I'm pretty bummed by the outcome, during that whole 6 hour flight it only left 4 track marks or whatever, I thought it was supposed to update my progress every 10 min... The only places it seemed to send a message was when I was on the ground in Corvallis, Seattle and Olympia, and Olympia was the last loc shown even though we finished in Corvallis.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/face ... 6y26JpMiWv

That is the link to my SPOT page, the only time I touched it was when I turned it on, and then held down the button to put it in tracking mode, then when I turned it off in Corvallis.

As I see it I just spent $250 on nothing?

Any advice?

I had the same problem...However I soon learned that my SPOT needs a clear view of the sky. I now place it on my dash behind my compass. I works well now and I haven't had any problems. Hope this helps.

Yeah I guess sitting on it didn't help much.

Thanks!

It probably sent the message the few times I stepped out and opened the door....

Don't worry I've used my spot all over the country from south america to Alaska . Me and Bruce share one now after little bitch at SPOT company decided to charge my credit card 2 months earl and we spot. Bruce got service for 2 years and I split the bill - and we paid by credit card that has since expired.From now if they don't take a check or money order screw'em,.

Good on ya for testing it. Yes needs clear view of sky - like all gps receivers. I velcro mine to the cross bar over my head under the skylight in my J3.

I put mine on my glare shield. I need to get a mount! It works great when it has a view of the sky.

soyAnarchisto wrote:Good on ya for testing it. Yes needs clear view of sky - like all gps receivers. I velcro mine to the cross bar over my head under the skylight in my J3.

Thanks- yeah I wasn't in my plane, was in a god damn expensive rental 172SP working on getting my IFR ticket... I probably could have built my plane for the rental costs today so being more focused on the auto pilot and the cool colors in the G$1000 I just kinda threw it on the floor and forgot about it.

I've seen all the videos with em on the dash so that's the plan for my personal aircraft. I'm going to rig it up in the Savannah tomorrow and will go fly around, so hopefully I will see some better results. Now into the garage to look for some velcro strips...

don't forget spare lithium AAA batteries

boom I'm ready

Interesting..... Sounds like you have the problem solved by repositioning the Spot.

In response to the events I am watching unfold in central Idaho this week I have elected to cash in some Cabelas points and buy a gen 3 spot.

I think you'll be happy with the Gen3. I've been using mine on every flight for about 6 months and it is pretty amazing how long the batteries last. I have unilimited tracking on mine set at 5 minute intervals and use alkaline batteries and they really do last a lot longer with the motion sensor in the Gen3.

My older SPOT is fine...batteries last for a long time...months of regular flying. I get hits every 10 minutes like clockwork when it is on the glare shield all the way forward...very seldom does it miss a fix.

The floor does not work as a place to put it- at all. The hits you got from thew floor of a 172 were probably flukes.

DBI wrote:In response to the events I am watching unfold in central Idaho this week I have elected to cash in some Cabelas points and buy a gen 3 spot.

Yes, that is exactly what got me to activate mine for the first time since I got it 6-7 years ago. I went for a flight over the Cascades on Wednesday, and got to thinking the survivability of a crash in my plane is rather high, so after coming home from that and reading a couple more posts on the Idaho/Johnson Creek crash thread, it was all I needed to finally fork over the $150.

If reliability and additional features like two-way text is important, InReach is a better option than Spot. The iridium satellite network is intrinsically better than GlobalStar that Spot uses.

bumper

I've been flying with my Spot for the last 5 years from Panama to Seattle to Miami and it has never missed a beat as long as it's on the glare shield.

Here are the links I found a while back when investigating this for myself.

Warning! Notice the dates on this one. I see nothing in the Spot literature to suggest anything has changed, and satellite technology isn't exactly something that's cheap to upgrade, but these notes are 5 years old now.
http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topi ... hichpage=2

The Spot website is sadly sparse on data about how things work. This page suggests that many of the concerns above are still valid:

http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php? ... howitworks

Specifically: "Last Updated 2013-07-10. Estimated coverage area. Actual coverage may vary. Success rates are forecasts for a SPOT messenger to successfully deliver a single message during a 20-minute period, based on network availability. Additionally, in everyday conditions it is normal for some messages to be blocked by your environment, such as hills or buildings. That 's why the SPOT Messenger is scheduled to automatically send multiple messages in every mode – giving you excellent overall reliability."

To me that means that it's entirely possible that data is still not getting through on the first attempt, but because of Spot retrying it eventually gets through. This is great if you want to review flights after the fact. Not so great if you are flying in the mountains (where you are most likely to need to be found and most likely to have transmission problems) and a data packet hasn't gotten through in 20 minutes.