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.