On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 20:47:21 UTC-6, 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

Back in 2012 at the 15M Nationals at Mifflin, Evan you were flying in this contest, a glider went into the trees during the task. The pilot activated the SPOT SOS and the crew came into the club house with the message(s) on their phone. The glider pilot was unable to try his cell phone due to losing their reading glasses during the crash. We were mapping the location and trying to determine which county agency to contact. When the correct county agency was contacted they had received a 911 call as the pilot had recovered the glasses and accessed cell phone.

However the location determined by triangulating the cell phone was many many miles off, I do not remember exact number but greater than 10 miles. One of the tow planes was sent out with a spotter and verified the location and directed emergency folks to the scene. Te county agency was skeptical about the coordinates we had from SPOT as they were unfamiliar with the devices.

Yes I will always fly with a satellite based tracker and notification device