On Jan 2, 4:42 pm, Dan G wrote:
On Jan 2, 12:36 am, "
wrote:

and more importantly has potential to
save lives.

It's not a PLB, nor can it even mimic the functions of one. It's not a
piece of survival equipment.

Dan

It is not a PLB by definition, but it surely looks like a piece of
survival equipment to me. A PLB meets specific legal requirements/
approvals, etc. including a good old fashioned 121.5 homing beacon.
But at some level you are playing semantics, instead how about
describing what the issues are you see with SPOT? Do I personally want
a PLB hanging off my parachute harness when in deep crapola, yes, more
so than a SPOT. But especially when flying in remote desolate areas I
want (and have) both a PLB and SPOT for tracking and non-life and
death escalations (land outs, etc.).

Expect to see lots of marketing of survival stories of people saved by
having a SPOT, you can just tell where they are going with this. After
all, it is capable of sending an accurate lat/long position, with
escalating levels of severity and more importantly unlike ELT and PLBs
it is capable of sending pseudo real time position reports so it is
possible to get last know position information without relying on
either a PLB or ELT manual activation or unreliable ELT impact
activation. As for mimicking the function of a PLB, I'd say they aim
to mimic the rapid notification and lat/long fix that SARSAT provide,
and on paper they should be able to do that part pretty well. Now how
well they work in practice, including escalation into the appropriate
authorities, we'll have to see. Probably like you, I dislike any
marketing that blurs the differentiation between the SPOT and an PLB
-- and I wish they would emphasize the tracking feature more (which
allows this to be positioned as a value add over *also* having a PLB).

Darryl