On Tuesday, May 1, 2018 at 7:47:21 PM UTC-7, Tango Eight wrote:
Just back from a long weekend at Mifflin...

We had a glider land at the big field near the South end of Raystown ridge Sunday about 1930 local (30 minutes before sunset). His was the last glider flying, no one heard his landing call on 123.3. There is no cell coverage and no available land line phone for several miles around this remote field. At sunset, we noticed we were short one glider. We found the pilot by consulting his spot page, noted multiple pings in same location and an "Okay" msg. Access to this field is difficult, includes a locked gate, so authorities were involved. They got the pilot out late evening, glider recovered on Monday. Despite our assurances that the pilot was okay, the cav was sent complete with fire and emergency medical support.

Coincidentally, this pilot and I were discussing our lack of satisfaction with Spot the evening before. Both of us planned not to renew our subscriptions.

This incident underscores the obvious problems with cell tracking, PLBs (only communicates with .gov functionaries, provides no data, only a non-specific call for emergency help), Spot (one way comm without confirmation, only sends canned msgs to pre-arranged email and txt via email, many potential points of failure, toy like reliability). Inreach might be better? Perhaps. If your device hasn't been bricked by a software "update".

It's probable in this specific incident that we'd have figured things out (albeit with significant uncertainty) from a cell based tracking device. I expect the flight track, time of day and lack of other communication would have made the Raystown field the first place we'd look, but having a firm location and okay msg was pretty huge here. I'm not rethinking any of my misgivings about Spot, but in this specific instance it was a big help.

best regards,
Evan Ludeman / T8

Glad the pilot was retrieved OK. Was somebody actually aware ahead of time the SPOT was potentially going to be used to order up a retrieve? And an "OK" the understood message for that?

Possibly Instead of sending out "OK" it would have been better to have prepared custom message with one saying they are not injured and need a retrieve and having that go directly to the crews/club email. (only one custom message is a limit... you can't ask for example for an air retrieve vs ground retrieve).

But even better, just ditch SPOT. InReach is so much better, and the two way messaging is great. Very flexible and clear, like: "Landed OK, pls. send ground retrieve, cash in trailer, bring Lagunitas IPA, babyback ribs, coleslaw" :-) (ah reminds me of a retrieve from Milford back to Parowan, what a crew, and they did not actually need fancy messages to know to bring beer and great BBQ).

But a reminder there is to load a contacts database in the InReach... relying on looking up contacts on your phone, even if it is still with you, and working, is not a great idea. The rechargeable batteries in the current Garmin InReach units seem great but I carry a USB charger cable to power the InReach from the ships battery just in case I've forgotten to recharge it fully before flying. (And I also have a 406 MHz PLB on my parachute, so covered lots of ways).