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off topic? SPOT stops tracking...

teaguy

Member
Just a heads up, tell your significant others not to follow the tracking progress on a SPOT messenger too closely! ;) On the second leg of a flight today over major mountains in British Columbia Canada my SPOT tracking function stopped just after take off. My wife loves to follow my progress and after 45 minutes of no updates right after take off, she got a little concerned. I have no idea what happened but Transport Canada and Search and Rescue where happy to talk to me when I landed in Creston BC. The unit did start tracking again after about a 50 minute stoppage. But the phone calls had already started by then. So, it is a terrific little unit but it may stop tracking now and then and will probably just start back up again. Needless to say my wife has decided to take the SPOT info with a grain of salt.

Just in case there are others who follow SPOT tracking too closely.

Mark Mercier
C-GQRV RV7-A
Vancouver, BC
 
Not that it may have anything to do with it, or not............

But we push the "OK" button for at least 10 seconds after the "on" button. Then the SPOT never fails to track every 10 minutes. Until we started keeping that "OK" button down longer, it would occasionally turn the tracking function off. We have a lot of hours with no tracking failures.

L.Adamson --- RV6A
 
I did not turn the unit off as it was just a pit stop and it was tracking after takeoff and then stopped and then it started on it's own again a little under an hour later.
Mark
 
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Louise has been using her SPOT for almost a year now on her several-times-weekly commute, so i am pretty familiar with the fact that you have to take the tracking page with a grain of salt. Occasionally the system seems to miss an update, or not give one for 30 minutes - then puts out three at once, with the correct time tags. 95% of the time, it's fine, but I would never call out the troops based on a missed update - or two, or three. As remarkable as the overall system is, I don't believe it was designed as a real-time airplane tracker - it was designed for hikers who move much slower than 170 knots!

Paul
 
Spot Users

Also keep in mind that while in the "tracking mode" if you send an enroute "Okay", you will take Spot out of tracking mode. You must re-initiate tracking mode after sending the okay...at least, that is my feeble understanding of the system.
 
One other thing. We've had to log out and back in, to the website to get the 10 minute updates. I'm not usually the one watching the progress as I've been flying. But a friend and RV9A owner took my 6A on a cross country last weekend. The first two updates came on line, but I had to re-login for the rest................and for every update. This is what my wife say's she's had to do lately. What's the solution?

L.Adamson --- RV6A
 
My spot is collecting dust in the basement. While an interesting device, it fails to hold up to it's claims.

We took the spot to Costa Rica for a week. It was in tracking mode pretty much constantly. Whenever we were out of the building it was given a prominent view of the sky bit still failed to register more than a few hits per day at it's best.
 
My spot is collecting dust in the basement. While an interesting device, it fails to hold up to it's claims.

We took the spot to Costa Rica for a week. It was in tracking mode pretty much constantly. Whenever we were out of the building it was given a prominent view of the sky bit still failed to register more than a few hits per day at it's best.

In our case, we travel on many cross country flights. The SPOT has done an excellent job for the eight months we've owned it. I think it's a great product, since I care less about filing flight plans these days. All in all, once we got into the habit of keeping that "OK" button down for a good ten seconds or longer; it hasn't failed us. Just check it every once and a while to see that the two lights bleep in unison every three seconds. Tomorrow I'm headed off for a 600 mile flight. I'll let everyone know if it fails.. :)

L.Adamson --- RV6A
 
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