On Saturday, June 6, 2015 at 10:39:06 AM UTC-6, Steve Koerner wrote:
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Common practice these days is to mount Spot on ones parachute. snip

Consider the searcher's paradox when a downed pilot uses a Spot which is not transmitting reliably. Searchers will sensibly examine ones past Spot unit performance. If they see that it is not uncommon that your Spot unit misses two or more 5 minute transmits in a row, then the search area becomes something like a 15 minute assumption; that would be like a 25 mile search radius which equals 1900 sq miles. You may never be found. Spot owners should consider this trade-off carefully. My own opinion is that it is much better to have reliable tracking operation than it is to have the unit attached to my parachute.

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Thanks Steve,

I tend to prefer to mount my spot on my instrument panel rather than my parachute, in part because I still use the old larger SPOT 1 which is a bit bulky on the parachute, but also because I like the more reliable tracking when it is mounted on the panel.

Also one needs to be careful when evaluating the reliability of the new spots as they will back fill the past few points if it misses them. Meaning that it may appear to be updating more reliably(often) than it is.

Brian