nath981

95% of the time, I ride alone (twisties, fire trails, scenic routes,etc.). I need a personal locater and was thinking about the Spot or similar. I read somewhere that the Spot doesn't work unless you're in the open, like power line, field, or similar, i.e.,worthless if you slide into the woods in a remote area or otherwise under some canopy/cover.

Does anyone have any knowledge, experience, or opinions relative to effectiveness, cost or other significant info that might help in making a choice?

thanks!

nothing

I mean don't most cell phones have gps for this type of stuff? I know my nokia has the features, to locate your coordinates and speed, all that jazz.

Tweety

Very few cellphones have a fully independant GPS locator, almost all of them use A-GPS, meaning they rely partially on the celltowers for location... The few that have a full GPS is unfortunately the big smartphones with a nice 3"+ screen... That means that they are highly likely to either be as smashed up as you after a crash or run out of juice fairly soon, probably before anyone knows to look for you... Plus most of them work in such a way that the GPS is only on if you turn it on to preserve battery life... And that only works if you are conscious and able to use the phone...

The Spot, and others that use true GPS, not cell coverage aren't "useless" when you have no view of the sky... They aren't great either... Clear view gives you an immidiate GPS fix with low battery usage, and an SOS goes through instantly... Partially covered view does the same but burns considerably more battery... Fully covered view, ie in a ditch under foliage will 80% of the time get a semi-reliable fix (ie larger search area) but it will hammer until it get's through and it will get through in all but the most extreme conditions... (The SOS worked in a concrete basement 2 stories underground, but the GPS fix was off by about a km when I tested mine... In a normal house, it was off by some hundred meters...)

I'm using a Fastfind... It has a GPS, like the Spot, but also a locator beacon (known frequency for SAR)... If you use the SOS button, it activates the beacon at a fixed intervall, sending bursts that make it easy for SAR personel to locate you at close range if your GPS fix is semi-reliable... It works best if you are able to fold the antenna out, but when we tried them out, we could get a fix from 400-500m without it... That means that if the GPS gives a fix along a road or trail, within reasonable distance, locating me once on location should be possible even if I'm off the trail...

The bad thing about it... It uses a onetime cap on the extendable antenna... Needs replaceing if you use it...

Old Yeller

I'm thinking you need 4 wheels and OnStar.

RWhisen

nath981

I'm thinking that maybe you're not thinking of what I'm thinking. This could be because, while I am old, I am not yeller.

nath981

thanks for the info. I received a Garmin nuvi 255wt for my birthday yesterday and asked if I could trade it on a personal locater. Now that's gratitude for ya, huh. haha. Ignorant bastard. So I was reading on-line and someone commented that the Spot wouldn't work in a lot of situations where you were under heavy canopy or similar, but that his ACR works fine in these same conditions.

I wanna trade this Garmin in soon because I need a locater a lot more. Been wanting to get one for quite a while. I don't care much about dying but I'd rather not lay in the woods seriously injured for days dirtying my pants if it can be avoided.

I'll check into the fastfind. apersheate it.

Tweety

Both have positive and negative points... The Spot is "always on"... Ie if you are out, it will still work for somebody that is looking for you... If it has signal and the batteries are good...

The ACR/Fastfind is not always on... You need to unfold the antenna and press SOS... Hard to do if you are unconscious, but when you do, the signal comes through...

It's on the ACR website, so it's biased, but the points are true... http://www.acrelectronics.com/videos...lbvsvideo.aspx

7moore7

Get one of each...

skokievtr

very interesting...so how USD for example is the ACR Product: 2885
SARLink™ View
PLB-350C ??? I'm sitting down

Tweety

Go have a look here http://www.marine-electronics-unlimited.com/EPIRB.html for some examples of both the Fastfind and the ACR's...

nath981

good idea. How bout you get one and i'll get the other, and then you give me the one you bought? haha

These are the kinds of things you hope you never need, kinda like ATTATT. And if you only use them once, that's more than enough to justify the costs.

personally, I have fallen off way too many times already, so much so that I used to say, " if you don't fall off at least once a summer, you aren't riding", and for me, that was quite accurate. In fact, I never had a bike that wasn't down at least once.

Since I ride remote roads mostly alone and often with a little more exuberance than is wise, I think this is a good tool for me, and probably others to have. All you have to do is slide off the road in a turn, into the woods, down a bank, etc. and you and your bike have virtually disappeared. If you're unable to move, traffic could be going by and never know that anything happened.

nath981

you know what I'm looking for tweety. Thanks. what do think of this one for my purposes?

http://www.marine-electronics-unlimi...d+210+PLB.html

Old Yeller

Probably the reason you're worried about ending up in the trees to begin with.

Tweety

I was mainly answering the questions about cost, ie both products available to compare...

That's the one I have actually... Like I said, if you get knocked out and can't activate it, it's useless, but if you are conscious and can press SOS, you will get found, it's that simple...

The reason I got that one isn't mainly riding, but the fact that I do all kinds of stupid stuff, whitewater/open sea kajaking, mountain climbing/hiking in remote area's and trial riding, both alone and with friends... Plus making the skies unsafe with an ultralite... That thing is for when that time when all else fails... And it's worth it...

7moore7

I bet that's damn fun in the backyard that you have

Tweety

Well, some of it's a bit of drive/trek before it get's to the fun parts, but not too bad...

Speaking of backyards, mine is actually getting a bit small, need to find space for more toys...

RCVTR

Good discussion. It's not something I had considered.

I think I'm going to buy a dirt bike pretty soon and could end up far from everything, in a short time. I think I can ride the dirt from my house to Winnemucca.

nath981

Sounds like me when I was younger, with some salient exceptions of course. Everything from racing bikes and cars, skydiving, skiing, spelunking/repelling, fighting(boxing and Pai Lum), etc., and lots of LSD, mescaline, crystal meth, et al to celebrate with. No need to have a personal tracker then, in fact the opposite. haha Too much fun.

Then, rather suddenly, i had to stop feeding my adrenalin and start feeding 4 kids. Rude Awakening! Don't tie yourself down with all that responsibility unless you got pesos a plenty or you'll need reign those sails in fast and hard, believe me. From hedonism to buddism in a heartbeat. haha

Anyway, back to the Spot which has a monthly fee I believe, so costs will equalize over a short period. I heard that with the Spot, your whereabouts can be tracked on a computer. Is this something that could direct some help or not? I can check it out, but thought you might know how well, if at all, it works....wouldn't be as quick or direct, so maybe not worth considering.

Tweety

Yeah, I know how it works, my brother has one, we kind of cover both bases when we go out together...

The Spot is "always on", ie once you head out, you start it up and stick it in your backpack and it transmits it's location every half minute or so... With the basic cost you can't track it in realtime, only view it afterwards, but if you are unconscious and can't press SOS, it will keep transmitting location for a couple of days before the batteries run out (with clear skies, under a tree it burns through the batteries in a matter of 24-48h)... Your family can't track you, but SAR/Spot's personell have the "track" of where you where heading, and even if you are in the ditch without a signal, your last GPS fix should give them a decent idea of where to look for you...

So the obvious downside is no locator beacon for SAR to lock onto, and once you loose contact with the GPS satelite they can only guess based on your earlier movement... But it takes pretty dense foliage to kill of the signal completely, it might not be able to send the SOS, but once in a while the location get's through...

To be honest, in the case of going on your own on a dirtbike, or VTR on a lonely country road, the Spot is probably the best choice... As long as you are moving, it will get through occasionally even in a friggin big woodland, and that should be enough to guess what ditch you are in...

The biggest downside are the fee's and the fact that it absolutely eats batteries...

Oh, nope... No kid's yet... And responsibility or not, ain't no friggin way there gonna be 4 of them, 1 or 2 will suffice... And as far as money, well... I'll make do, but I have already told the better half in no uncertain terms that the VTR, the ultralite and the racecars stay... The rest of the toys are negotiable... But not those...

nath981

You may be right. i don't like the monthly fee idea, and I don't like anybody tracking me. Don't call me. I'll call you in most cases.

kids....smart man, we don't need more people for sure. and two is fine, but one may be difficult as all your eggs in one basket, and all your attention and focus, and nobody to share and grow with. Can and has worked probably somewhere, but seems to be the exception IME. Most "only" children I knew were spoiled and selfish, arrogant brats. The exceptions would be anyone reading this. haha

And hold onto your toys like an only child.

nath981

still researching PLBs and am learning little by little. McMurdo is the least expensive new PLB($250) with any decent reputation. They sell them at Bass Pro Shop and this is one buyer's experience:


"I cannot speak for the integrity of the unit.
I only pray that it works if I ever need to activate it in an emergency. However, I can speak to the poor customer service of the manufacturer (McMurdo) and the distributor (Revere). There is some lack of clarity in the manual which has not been corrected (even though McMurdo sent their dealers a bulletin about the flaw). This flaw easily leads some people to think that the unit fails the GPS test, when in-fact it may have passed. There is no toll-free support number listed and the company is in Britian, so all you can do is email and wait. In my case, my email to McMurdo was forwarded to Revere and someone contacted me three days later. In the meantime, I had to spend a lot of time convincing Bass Pro to send me out a new unit via FedEx, which they graciously agreed to do. Kudos to Bass Pro! Turns out, I never needed the new unit. No apologies from Revere or McMurdo and no compensation; not even a free battery replacement card! According to the two techs I spoke to at Revere, the missprint in the owners manual has caused problems for many customers but McMurdo refuses to print a revised one! Guess they don't want to spend the money. Terrible customer service all the way around!"

This is probably no big deal in terms of the quality of the technology, but the cust support doesn't sound promising for those in the US, albeit it is unlikely you'd need any. (about a $100 bucks less than ACR)

I spoke with ACR reps, based in FLA, and they seemed very helpful and were easily accessible. Some of their products have been discontinued and these seem to be the ones available for around $200 from Amazon, Ebay, others.

The caution I received with buying these was that, while they might be fine, several buyers have contacted them with dead batteries and other issues that were so costly to repair that they could have bought have bought a new one. **** you off, huh.

The other caution with buying even brand new ACR PLBs was that the warranty begins from the date of manufacture, not the date of sale, which is implied by many "Full Warranty" advertisements. Therefore, you could but a brand new PLB with full warranty, but was manufactured 3 or more years ago, so if the battery fails, your deal likely wasn't so good. rot roh!

The other thing is that they stopped production of many or all of the models being sold used and people buy them and then call them for repair. Most often, they are SOL because they are only repairing certain ones and the cost doesn't typically justify any significant payment for the used beacon.

A good way to go according to the ACR rep is that if you can pick up a used beacon for little to nothing, they may be able to upgrade it to working condition for half of what it costs for a new one.

so far, that's what i know.