Thread: Spot satellite messenger, aka findme SPOT

Friend I do a few mountain trips with has a spot, quite good in its way for giving updates etc. On an 11 day trip she was doing updates once or twice a day for friends and family to track our progress, apparently they thought it was great. Not as foolproof or quick response as a PLB for emergencies though I think.

Some people don't realise how long they have to wait for the message to send and turn it off before it has gone, heard about a SAR operation in Canada or the US where that happened with an early one - they turned it off (to save batteries for another alert later) before it finished sending, so people got the emergency alert but no coordinates. They went to the coordinates from the previous 'delayed but ok' message but that was on the wrong side of the mountain as they'd carried on after that and got in trouble descending the other side. Think they found them but it took an extra day which could have easily been the difference between life and death. Moral of the story: know the limitations of equipment and how to use it.