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GPS City Q&A » Outdoor GPS » SPOT Coverage?

Outdoor GPS (3 replies)

Item

Original Question

SPOT Coverage?

› DeLorme Earthmate PN-60W with SPOT Receiver

Author

Reply

Rick
Varsava

Original question asked on Nov 2, 2010, 3:44pm

I have heard that Spot has lag time with it's coverage. My source on this was a full-time Search and Rescue worker. I was just wondering if this is the case.

I Dual Sport ride and get out of Cell Phone coverage all the time. I will go for 600 to 800 km rides. Sometimes I am 4 hours or more late getting home and my Wife freaks outs. So I want a systems that will work in real time in order to be in contact with my wife.

GPS City
Calgary, AB

Reply #1 on Nov 3, 2010, 7:44am

Hello Rick,

For the USA they are one of the better map providers. In Canada they are just being introduced to the market so have some catch up to do. They have tons of supplemental map data that supplements the included vector mapping.

* You may want the spot with out a GPS tied to it and get a Garmin. The Delorme is not a bad product and the maps are not too bad but that varies on where you are in the world and where you travel.

Cheers

Sailor Sam
Surrey, BC

Reply #2 on Nov 3, 2010, 9:10am

In response to Rick query, ( I have a good friend who is a randonner including the PBP and I thinks you are all crazy), For real time you can't beat a sat phone of course at many times the unit cost and usage time. I've had the Spot 1 for 2 years and the Spot 3 (delorme) since September. On pressing Send, it takes about 10 seconds for the unit to send the message up. Its been 99% successful on first attempt although it repeats 2 more times in the next 10 minutes. I have always got the automatically generated cell phone text back about 5 seconds later. However, the email which is usually sent within the minute has been delayed on occasion up to 10 minutes. I hope this answers you query.

Sailor Sam
Surrey, BC

Reply #3 on Nov 3, 2010, 9:21am

Further to my earlier reply, for SOS calls, the message goes to their SOS center in Texas. They say they will try to contact your phone contacts first to verify before calling local S&R. It is unfortunate sometimes in that this could lead to a critical lag. It is also unfortunate that they still get false alarms due to kids playing with the device, etc. However, with the custom messaging, they should be aware the situation is real and Now. You would think any way.

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