Recovery by Spot

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