Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Spot, and Happy Solstice

This is interesting...

I think I'm going to order one and check it out, could be really good for paragliding in remote areas, backcountry skiing, etc. I'm a firm believer in doing my absolute best to self-rescue, but sometimes it's not going to work out. A satellite text message could be just the trick, and a lot simpler and lighter than a satellite phone for sure. In the Canadian Rockies we don't normally have cell phone coverage, this could be just the ticket. The same service is used to track shipping containers and other cargo, it works well for that, although Globalstar phone service is reportedly imploding.

And a big, Happy Solstice! This is the darkest day of the year, from here on out we're all (those of us in the North anyhow) going to find a little more light in our lives, yeah! Most cultures in the northern hemisphere have a huge party around this time of year, some sort of "festival of lights" to mark the fact that the days are finally growing in length and the nights shrinking--hence all the lights on houses, trees, etc. Christmas is great and all, but all the commercialism makes it a bit difficult for me to get very fired up about. I'm also unimpressed with the whole god/supernatural/psychic thing, but more light is a great thing for sure! Less headlamp juice required from here on out for all our adventures.

7 comments:

L said...

Yay Yay Yay!!! Happy solstice day!!!

Anonymous said...

I pick up a SPOT last week and have been playing with it , so far it works as advertised and is great for spamming your buddies at work when your out playing with the "ok" feature.

Brad said...

Gobalstar told the Rafting company i worked for back in june that they would fix the probelms they had by end of july. we canceled our sat phone service in end of july when now change happened.Not once in 6 months did it work for us. It caused us a few probelms, but if this serivce works well then it would be pretty damn good to have.

Anonymous said...

Brad, I can't figure out from your posting whether the SPOT device didn't work or if your Globalstar satellite phone didn't work.

Unknown said...

I've heard Globalstar, which does the sat service for the Spot, is having some problems with duplex (two-way) coms, but the simplex (one-way, Spot to Sat) is working just fine. Sounds like Kyle is having some fun with it, I'd be curious if anyone else has used it?

Thanks,

WG

Anonymous said...

Will,
Getting my hands on a SPOT soon, will let you know how it goes in and around Canmore, icefields, etc... It really is a simple idea, as text messages are sent in blocks anyhow, the time required to stay in contact with the satellite is not very long, just pieced together on the other end. ALWAYS more reliable than any duplex comms

Chris said...

I've got a SPOT (stumbled over here from Cilogear blog...) and so far it works good. Push a button, wife gets an "okay" message whenever I want to send one. I just have the basic stuff, not that tracking thing.