Hey Duke
Been using one for a year & a half now. They are great.
Here is my story about it that I wrote on Pashnit when I lost it. It let me find it, that was proof enough for me.
The system is great. I thought I had a picture of it on the MC, I don't but I will take one & post it for you. There is a nice mounting bracket for them now. Ask any questions.
If when I get home the weather has held out & not snowed we willprobably ride on Sat or Sun. This is the shared link to our SPOT unit. I will turn it on if we ride this weekend & email you so you can check out the SPOT tracking map.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0SP3I6hdWJubYGQPt9SIJX2aDarYct9qz--------------------
Well, SPOT is a very interesting unit. I have had one for almost a year now. We use it on our longer trips or when riding alone. This past weekend I had an interesting experience.
I usually have SPOT in a soft bag with clothes on the tour pack rack, nice & safe & the cloth bag lets SPOT send out it’s signals. I have tried it inside my tour pack & it just doesn’t work well inside the hard box.
The last couple of long day trips I have tie wrapped the mounting bracket to my tour pack rack. Well, two out of three trips this worked well. This past weekend was trip three. Seems like SPOT decided to leave the tour pack at about 140 miles into the trip. Of course being very observant I did not know it was gone till I got home to an upset wife.
Why you ask, well she tracks me when I gone making sure I keep moving and all is well. SPOT left the MC at about 12pm & continued to send out signals until I pulled into the garage at home, 5pm. Needless to say Trudy had called me numerous times with no luck as I was not in cell phone areas. She was extremely concerned as SPOT was telling her there was a problem. She was caught in a catch 22. I was with 24 other MC’s, no one had called her, I must be ok or someone would surely call.
When I got home and discovered SPOT gone I called customer service to see what to do as I did not want someone finding it & not knowing what it was pressing the 911 button. Customer service suspended the service and that kept anyone from abusing it. I did get all the tracking info off of my SPOT page before it was suspended and plotted into my GPS SPOT’s location.
I emailed out to a couple people that SPOT was gone, but I knew where its last known position was. Gary & Donna responded with, we live fairly close to SPOTs last location we will go see if we can find it. I sent Gary the last known information. Today Gary calls me & said he and Donna are on site, looking for that little rascal. No luck right off.
Now the important part. GPS accuracy, without WAAS, is 150’. Gary & I talked about that & he and Donna expanded their search. Low & behold Gary spotted SPOT hiding under the bottom rail of a fence. Maybe the reason for a limited amount of messages getting out. Gary paced off the distance to the coordinates that SPOT sent out, guess what it was about 150’.
So SPOT gave us a real live test without an emergency, SPOT allowed us to find it. Keep in mind for all those using SPOT that a search area needs to be expanded if you are looking for someone that has sent out a signal for assistance.
Great unit & it proved it’s worth to all of us today.
My sincere thanks to Gary & Donna for their recovery ride.
Yes, I am going to use a better mounting system. Ram Mounts now makes a SPOT bracket, yes it’s already ordered.
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This is a picture of Donna picking up SPOT from it's resting place, it could have been me being rescued!