Good reason to have a SPOT if you ride alone

[LilBeaver]

When my daughter was younger we had a service on our cell phone that we could use to trak her. Was that similar to SPOT?

 

Im not for certain, but I believe that uses cell towers to track instead of a GPS signal so if she was in an area with no cell reception, it may not work.

 

I know that Friesman commented on this already but I'll provide a little more info here on the cellular phone services.

 

The cellphone locators use a combination of GPS and the cellular towers. That is, the handset itself has GPS chip in it that uses the GPS satellites to determine the coordinates/location of the handset, then those coordinates are transferred to the host service via the cell towers/data network.

 

Spot does not use the actual GPS satellites for communication purposes, it is another network but that is really beyond the scope of this thread.

 

Point of story, yes SPOT seems to be a great tool - especially in the case of the off road applications or a few weeks ago the story posted about the 3 professional riders on their way to sturgis; one ended up needing serious medical attention.

 

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What turns me off to it is the $$$$. But hey, maybe I'm just a cheapskate.

[Dave77459]

I wanted a GPS which was waterproof, and capable of running off batteries or off a vehicle 12v, so I could carry it in a backback as well as on a motorcycle. Looks like the Delorme has those features, plus the SPOT emergency device. As well as just being able to send text messages in addition to emergency notifications. I'm real close to buying one. Just waiting for a little more feedback here and best price shopping.

 

I found TigerGPS.com which has good prices and says they'll have them in stock next week (where have I heard that before?).

 

I'll check out the protravelgear web site too. A years free SPOT activation would be nice, thats normally $99.

 

update ----

 

The two websites offer free $49 web tracking if you buy the $99 SPOT activation and the $18 annual product warranty service using a special code good thru Aug 31st. So its not free activation.

I use a Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx on my bike. 10-12 life on 2 AAs. I do geocaching, and want a GPS that will travel with me. I have 111,179.8 miles on it now.

 

Dave