Impressed the cynic in me

By Andrew McLean Ranked #30 - Trail Running Accessories July 27, 2009

Before using the SPOT, I thought it was pretty much a lame little gimmick for people who got lost in the woods and had to call 911, but that is hardly the case. We used a SPOT unit on a two week trip to Alaska, and not only did it work flawlessly, it was fun, easy to use and when we got back home tons of people said how cool it was to be able to casually follow our progress.

The SPOT works by taking a GPS fix, then sending it up to a satellite, which in turn beams it down to a webserver, which converts your GPS waypoint into a Google Earth map so that when someone gets a message, they click on the link and it instantly opens Google Earth and shows them where you are. It seems like a lot of technology to possibly go wrong, but somehow it doesn't.

I was worried about the battery life, but afterwards found out that it is similar to an avalanche beacon - you can leave these things running for days on end, or even an entire week-long trip and the battery will still be good.

The downside of them is that the website that you have to use to set up your account is very confusing and not intuitive. They also have a SPOT Adventures website where you can share your SPOT info with the world, but that is also too complicated for a single-celled ski mountaineering brain like mine to figure out. Hopefully these will be simplified in the future.

But, overall an excellent product.

View Details: SPOT Satellite Messenger

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