John, nice tracking map.
(link) That anomalous point that should have been at the Portal is similar to what Spot units do in deep canyons where the GPS satellites are obscured by steep canyon walls. Every so often, they will throw out a location that is obviously off the mark. Must be due to having too few satellites in view.
63, The Spot Connect user manual is
here. It mentions two buttons: On/Off, and the SOS button. At least they put that on the device, in case the phone dies. It appears there are no other functions that would operate independently of the phone. Pretty strange -- the manual does not show where the buttons are.
While we're on the topic, Bob Pickering
posted this on wpsmb:
I just wanted to add a bit of information on Spot performance:
I've been using a Spot 2 since shortly after they came out. I normally climb above tree line, and the vast majority of my Tracking, Custom, and OK messages get out. I climbed Tehipite Dome yesterday, where I spent nearly the whole day under the cover of the trees. Only 36 messages got out, when there should have been at least 90. The elapsed time between two of my tracking messages was two hours and 37 minutes. If tracking messages weren't getting out, there is a good chance that a 911 wouldn't have gotten out either.
It's no secret that performance may suffer when reception is obstructed, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I always assumed that most of the complaining about poor performance was due to improper orientation of the antenna, failure to read the manual, or other fixable issues. Now I know how much difference the trees can make. I'll try to stay away from sub-10K peaks from now on.
When I was finishing my trip several weeks ago, the last couple of Spot signals did not get out, when I was near or at Whitney Portal. Too many trees there for a Spot.
