On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 8:24:03 PM UTC-8, wrote:
I fly in the Owens Valley area and find mobile text messaging is spotty at best. The iPhone will not retry a failed transmit, but will try for quite a while before reporting a failure. I'll sometimes text status to my wife and it might take a few tries to get it sent. I might see a response several hours later.

This year I upgraded my original inReach to a SE. So now she'll have the old one on a basic plan and I'll use the aviation plan. So no matter where we are, we can text each other via inReach.

Now that I've moved on from my ASH-26E to a ASW-27b, it's possible I might be landing out in some remote area. Having reliable comms with my crew is vital.

5Z

On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 7:15:09 PM UTC-8, George Haeh wrote:
While cell coverage in a particular area
may not be enough to sustain a voice call,
it may be sufficient to transmit an ~100
byte data packet. Retries might be made
by the software.

I originally had SPOT I and liked it, but decided to try Inreach because of the messaging capability (if you land out in the middle of Nevada you WON'T have any cell service!). I gave up on it after the first year when I found it next to impossible to suspend the monthly service, which costs $75 per month. Figuring a 6 month flying season, that works out to close to $500 per year. I went back to Spot, which costs me about $100 per year. Yeah, you don't get altitude, but who really cares? My crew only cares if I stop moving. Yes, the Inreach does keep trying if a message doesn't get thru, but with 99% reliability that has not been an issue IMHO.

Tom