Scott may disagree with me here. The primary function of SPOT or any of the tracking devices is to provide tracking information for those who are following their progress. On the mainland of Australia you should expect SPOT to perform as advertised. If your going further a field you should consider one of the Iridium supported products - if you're remaining inside mobile phone coverage consider one of the mobile phone tracking applications.
Distress Alerting - all tracking devices have an Emergency switch or button. However at this stage I know of no tracking devices that are monitored by internationally recognized national Search and Rescue Centers. Here in Australia the only monitoring done in the National RCC is for Cospas/SARSAT distress beacons. Like SPOT distress radio networks are monitored by other parties who pass on information to the appropriate RCC. Tracking devices do not replace Distress Beacons, but the information they provide can be very useful. SDF -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Scott Penrose Sent: Monday, 14 December 2009 10:30 PM To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] How to get SPOT to send an SMS On 14/12/2009, at 10:24 PM, Scott Penrose wrote: > The system used for the emergency does not rely on the SMS service we are talking about here Sorry, I meant to explain the above... SPOT receives potion by listening to the GPS. It then sends a message using data portion of Satellite Phone network (similar to SMS), which is picked up by the central monitoring service in the US. This message has nothing to do with normal phone networks. Then the central server forwards that message to internet servers. These internet servers, which are not used for emergencies, then do the non emergency stuff such as OK, Help and Tracking - and of course the Public and Private URLs for viewing your tracks/messages. Scott _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.1.0.447) Database version: 6.13900 http://www.pctools.com/uk/spyware-doctor-antivirus/ E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.1.0.447) Database version: 6.13900 http://www.pctools.com/uk/spyware-doctor-antivirus/ _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
