spot or a beacon

I do a lot of solo backpacking in the great smoky mountains national park. and would like to go on longer trips (most are overnight). Every time I go I worry my family and I am nervous. I am considering buying a spot or a beacon.

I am interested in the spot because my family can track my progress and know if I am running behind or ahead of schedule.
but i have read that they don't do so well under tree cover (which direct sunlight is rare in the Smokies).

I am trying to decide if i should buy a spot or a personal life beacon. Does anyone have any advice

I think, honestly, it depends on what you want the device to do for you. For me at least, they are different tools for different jobs. yeah the spot is supposed to send a signal out that you need help but its main appeal is sending out "ok" messages and ability to track.
So you have to ask yourself what would put your family at ease more?
If carrying an item just for that extreme emergency, then the beacon would probably be better since its a one time fee and should work no matter the conditions.
If you want to send updates if not track logs and the ability to call for help, then the spot would be the way to go.

You may want to ask around and see if anyone has used the spot in the area you plan to hike and how the service was. That might make up your mind for you.

Unless you're in a huge hurry wait until the jury is out on the new Spot, available this fall. If their claims are accurate it's a quantum leap from the old Spot with a better chip, antenna and added features.....reportedly for the same price. Then compare that to a PLB.

Got to the Trailspace website and read Bill S's report on the SPOT. This is not one of those "I bought this thing last week and it's really neat" bs gear reviews you usually see. Bill is a scientist who has done some serious testing of the SPOT and his report is the most comprehensive I have seen so far. Pretty much anything you want to know about the SPOT is in Bill's test report.

www.trailspace.com

A PLB is a "personal locator beacon" not a "personal life beacon."

btw, if you are soloing and are nervous about it, why are you doing it? If you aren't confident enough to be out alone, get some more experience before you wind up making a bad judgment call and needing a beacon.

A PLB or SPOT is not a substitute for experience or skills. Anyone who thinks so is an idiot.

I have the skills and experience the problem is that I know that in the course of a second your world can become very very bad.

Real life experience, I was backpacking and was going down a steep hill. I stepped and my knee went the wrong way. I later found out that my knee was badly hyper extended. There was no way that I was going to walk another mile. Thankfully I was with a group and about 20' from the road. What would have happened if I was alone and had been 11 miles in (which is where I started that morning)?

So just because you are knowledgeable and experienced, S*** still happens, its that knowledge and experience that helps to minimize the effects.

Whomacallit,
Hi
What Tom D means is that carrying such a device requires having the skills required to avoid using it except in a real, not a minor emergency. Whats wrong with a cell phone?
I carry a GPS and pain pills
Jim YMMV

Jim, you're not trying to put the pain pills in the battery compartment of the GPS again, are you?

I purchased a McMurdo Fast Find 210 earlier this year both for my safety and my Mom's peace of mind. I had no idea just how worried she would be when I went out, especially by myself, until my Dad told me. I felt like such a heal.

Anyway, my thought process in selection was this:
major tree cover in most of the areas I hike; I doubted anyone would be tracking my progress; I didn't think the yearly fee was worth it, however if I were to go out more often, I might have been convinced it was worth it; and I reviewed the reliability of the Spot and PLBs and decided that the reliability of the PLB was better for both me and my Mom.

However, if you aren't in a hurry, heed the advice given earlier and wait for the fall review of the new Spot.

I solo alot and considered getting a spot or beacon, I decided against simply because if I was hurt I would wonder what to do after I pushed the button, are they comin, did it work kinda thing. I leave a map on my desk with my route marked and trail notes and when I should be back. My wife knows if I'm not back on time to call authorities in the nearest town.

Oh my goodness, for once I find myself agreeing (somewhat) with Jim.

If you have cell phone reception where you are going to be hiking, a simple text message once a day will suffice. That's how my wife and I work it. I leave the phone off until I need to send the message and thus save battery. Phone stays close to my body (in cold weather) to maintain batter life. Sometimes though, I don't have cell reception here in deep, east Texas. In that case, I typically try to be heading home by 2pm on Sunday (for a weekend trip) and if necessary will stop and use a land line (ie pay phone - yes they still exist in small towns here. ) or I usually get cell reception around a small town (AT&T).

I ALWAYS leave a map and route and contact numbers of Forest Service and Sheriff departments in the area I will be hiking.

If you don't have cell reception, then I'm not sure that a SPOT would be any better.

Tango

Since a SPOT is connecting to sattelites, not cell towers, it is quite different from a cell phone and can connect in many places where there is no cell signal.

I tend to agree with the respondent above who felt the beacon is probably more reliable for that one life or death message, while the SPOT can provide the daily peace of mind update which the beacon cannot. What I have read regarding the SPOT's reliability led me to rent a PLB for my last week-long solo backcountry ski trip , which took me into an area where very few if any people go at that time of year, so that if I had been injured and unable to travel my chances would have been pretty poor without some way to call for help. I felt the PLB would be the most reliable. It may be that the new version of the SPOT will be superior. It definitely seems like the way to use the SPOT is to sign up for the tracking feature and keep it on all the time you are moving, so that you are sending plenty of messages. That way if some don't get through others will, and you will have left a pretty good track that should help in finding you even if your emergency call does not get through.

Where I go and want to go cell phone reception is spotty at best, as in I need to climb a ridge to hope to get it.

I carry my cell because I have heard that they can triangulate your location even without reception.

The other thing is that with the membership within two to three years (not including tracking, comparing apples to apples) the cost will be about the same.

I have talked it over with my family and the tracking feature is not necessary (nice for multi-day trips) because with both if I am hurt then authorities can come to my rescue.

My biggest fear is that with the economy as bad as it is, will SPOT go under? whereas a PLB is monitored by the government and the military.

I think that I will wait a little bit longer and buy a PLB.

I'm no expert on cell phones but I don't see how this is possible. How can a phone be located if it is in the middle of nowhere and not recognized by the cell system?

Or am I missing something here? Are you saying there is always enough of a signal to triangulate but not always enough to talk?

Since in most of the places I hike (except the Columbia River Gorge and the south side of Mt. Hood), I lose cell phone reception long before I get to the trailhead, I just turn the thing off and hide it in the car. If I have the phone on and I'm in a place with poor or no reception, the phone quickly runs down the battery trying to get a signal. It is true that with marginal reception, the towers can pick up a faint signal; they may or may not be able to triangulate it. Where there's no reception at all, there is no cell phone tower around to pick up the signal (which will very soon be zilch because your battery will be gone).

Even in the Columbia River Gorge, you often can't get a signal when you're down in the deep narrow canyons. Most trails quickly climb (!) up to where a signal is available, but not all of them. I do carry my phone (instead of my PLB) when I'm in the Gorge, though.

Trailrunner
I can confirm that you CAN triangulate on signals 10 db below what you can copy voice from. Whether you can triangulate on a signal is merely a matter of whom is looking for you. A complete message to a cell tower is gonna include a gps byte, but any signal strong enough can be detected and therefore DF'd (radio direction finding found)
Jim

Do phones actually have a GPS chip in them? In most cases, the answer is -no-. They uses AGPS, in which the cellular towers are used to triangulate your position from the phone's signal, rather than being derived at the phone using satellites. So they can -theoretically- be used to locate your phone even if there's not enough signal for a connection. Whether they do or not - maybe someone here has experience with the tower equipment and can answer that question.

Now I'm not sure if SAR has access to radio direction finders in the cellular frequencies, but that would be a portable way of locating your signal. Those boxes can detect really weak signals - way below the strength required for reliable data transfer. Two readings can pinpoint your phone.

Back to SPOT - Things I want to see in SPOT II:

• Increase the transmit power (overdrive) when you press 911 so the signal gets through dense canopy. (really need)
• An external antenna jack so I can keep the unit in the pack and just mount the antenna to the top of the pack. (nice to have)
• As long as it's going to run a GPS, how about a display of coordinates? (nice to have)
• How about some indication that the call went through? There's a two-way satellite modem in there, so it shouldn't be that difficult to add a "Hey, I'm connected and your message went through" indicator. (really need)
• Since we're on that line of thought, why not let it receive messages too, like "Come home now"? (nice to have)
• How about sending custom messages, such as "will be a day late". I won't pay $50 extra for tracking, but I'd pay that much for two-way peace of mind. Heck, do it like OnStar - charge per message. (also nice to have)
• Widgets for Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites. (nice to have)

If something like that doesn't show up, I'm still recommending a PLB. Since SPOT (in it's current version) still only works some of the time, that translates into some-of-the-time-peace-of-mind, which is no peace of mind.

Then again, I wonder if having a device like this would negate one of the reasons I hike - to get away from the tether.

"Do phones actually have a GPS chip in them? In most cases, the answer is -no-. They uses AGPS, in which the cellular towers are used to triangulate your position from the phone's signal, rather than being derived at the phone using satellites."

This seems like a difficult question to answer on a case-by-case basis. A-GPS seems generally to be defined as using cell tower(s) to assist the GPS, not necessarily to replace it. Here's one definition, and here's another. If someone has a really, clearly documented better read on this, I'd appreciate it, but at this point if I see a cell phone advertised as "A-GPS", I don't assume either way --- i.e., it might have a stand-alone GPS, and it might not. My current assumption is that the only way to tell for sure is to dig into the detailed specs and find the specific GPS chipset (SiRF Star III or whatever). If that can't be found, I just wouldn't assume either way.

You're right, I blended two ideas into one - oops! Ah...insomnia will do that to ya. What I was trying to say was that there is circuitry in AGPS-enabled phones that uses the cell tower's signals as if they were GPS satellites, then sends the timing data back to the tower because the phone doesn't have enough processing power to crunch the numbers that give actual coordinates. Most consumer phones don't have satellite GPS chips, which can do the number crunching, or the antenna to receive signals from GPS satellites. Without those elements they lack the ability to independently obtain a GPS fix. My understanding is that unless the phone specifically says "GPS enabled", like the new iPhone and a number of smartphones, it lacks that capability without tower assistance.

The cellular towers still can used to locate cell phones without AGPS or GPS using triangulation based on signal strength. It's not very accurate - but the capability is there.