SAFA Skysailor Magazine

38 SKY SAILOR November | December 2021 Satellite communicators and trackers These devices require you to first purchase the device and then purchase a subscription. Com- munications are carried over the commercial communications satellite constellations men- tioned above. There are several tiers of service available and there are differences in the cost involved between the service providers. What type of service you want will determine which product you choose. For me personally, Spot’s unit and subscription prices suit my needs. Once you do your due diligence, you reach your own conclusions. Following are three pro- ducts that I am aware of; there may be more. SPOT Spot is a business unit of Globalstar and started in 2007. The Spot satellite tracker has been available in several iterations – Gen1 through to the recently introduced Gen4 – and allow the sending of short pre-set messages as well as an SOS message when you’re really in trouble, to mobile phone and email address recipients. They are GPS enabled with live tracking capability. In 2018, they introduced the SpotX, which also allows two-way mes- saging. This unit has a small keyboard and look very much like a Blackberry mobile phone. Message set up on all devices is performed via a web browser interface. Additionally, the SpotX allows you to connect to your mobile phone via Bluetooth, but the big feature is writing and sending messages via the key- board. When you take out a SpotX subscription you are allocated a US phone number which your messages are sent from and through which folk can send messages to you. SpotX devices have rechargeable batteries, whereas the previous Gen devices use four AAA batteries. Rechargeable AAAs do not work Sending out an SOS Spot devices (from left): Gen1, Gen2, Gen3, Gen4, SpotX (all images are not to scale) Garmin inReach (l) and inReach Mini (r) ACR Electronics Bivy Stick PLBs: ACR Resqlink View and GME MT410G