Spot or InReach ??

I'd strongly recommend the Garmin InReach (older larger one is just fine... just sew a pocket on your parachute).

InReach's plans are complicated and difficult to price. There is a monthly plan that gives you... I believe.. either 5 or 10 min updates. But, at least for that, you get the ability to display altitudes to the person tracking you and ... most important... outbound text messaging.

The Enterprise plan often used for aviation is the one I use. Go to Paul Remde's Cumulus site to see how the pricing works. You pay by the number of bytes transmitted. I change my monthly rate from ~$20/month winter around 1500 bytes (you can disable the account for ~$7/month). During flying, contest or X-country season I raise it to 8000 bytes at ~$35/month. You can raise it to the next level higher plan anytime, but pay a $25 one time penalty for lowering it. One of the other benefits of the Enterprise plan is that you can change the sampling interval before takeoff to anything between 1 minute and 10 minutes. As I said it's complicated. During contests or long flight into "tiger country" I set it to 2 minute updates.

I estimate it's costing me $400/year for this service as long as I carefully manage the monthly plans for my flying. Not bad for peace of mind...

Walt Rogers WX

One more point about the Garmin InReach. Before a long cross country, contest or event, I carefully consider what information for emergency contacts will be recorded on the web site. I change my 1st and 2nd emergency contact, add notes about the type of flight and backup crew. Here's a sample of my InReach tracking page for, I believe, the last four years:

https://share.delorme.com/0b71a31caf...243ad768883515

One can filter to a particular day or time range by using the pull down menu "Filter Map" top left corner of page. Most of the flight are 2 min updates... but sometimes for local flying I set it at 5 minutes.

Walt Rogers WX

On Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at 1:23:23 AM UTC-4, WaltWX wrote:
One more point about the Garmin InReach. Before a long cross country, contest or event, I carefully consider what information for emergency contacts will be recorded on the web site. I change my 1st and 2nd emergency contact, add notes about the type of flight and backup crew. Here's a sample of my InReach tracking page for, I believe, the last four years:

https://share.delorme.com/0b71a31caf...243ad768883515

One can filter to a particular day or time range by using the pull down menu "Filter Map" top left corner of page. Most of the flight are 2 min updates... but sometimes for local flying I set it at 5 minutes.

Walt Rogers WX

New user question...

Is there some way to sync (some fraction of) my existing cell phone contacts with inReach using Earthmate? It doesn't look like there is.

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8

From InReach Contacts page: Add the people you contact the most. By syncing contacts to an iOS, Android, or inReach SE/Explorer, you'll save time and message space.

On Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at 9:07:09 AM UTC-4, 6X wrote:
From InReach Contacts page: Add the people you contact the most. By syncing contacts to an iOS, Android, or inReach SE/Explorer, you'll save time and message space.

I can read that too.

I was under the impression that I would be able to import contacts from my cell, which would be a tremendous time saver and reduce the likelihood of errors. The sales blurb seemed to at least hint that this was possible. If it is, I haven't yet figured out how to do this.

Hope that clarifies.

T8