West Coast Soaring Club

Hey, long time since I've flown, but I can't pass up a chance to comment on Spot vs Inreach. It took me a really long time asking on every outdoor forum I could find before I could get somebody to confirm side-by-side performance of the two. Somebody finally did for me, a few years back, and confirm...

I have some anecdotal evidence with the spot that strongly suggests tree cover is definitely an issue, and possibly the satellite thing as well. I carried it on an xc dirtbiking trip outside Vegas, and had extremely consistent points on the tracklog at 10-20 minute intervals over 8 hours, including ...

So just to be clear, you've sent messages from the inreach, in this general part of the world, while under some amount of tree cover, and confirmed they were actually received on the other end in a timely fashion? That's awesome, that's what I want to hear. Looking forward to details, but if so, I'l...

Price has come down now (though still approx 2x for inreach vs. spot connect, and 50% more annual fees) which is why I'm interested in comparing. But again, the focus is always on the feature set, not the performance. Obviously 2-way communication is better than 1-way in principle, but a message tha...

Has anybody actually done a direct comparison between the reliability of message transmission for the inreach vs. the spot? I did some quick searches online, and everything I found focussed on the differences between the feature set (primarily 1-way vs 2-way texting). But unless the inreach is actua...

I had just upgraded to the Connect before seeing some of the negative feedback on it, and was expecting to be disappointed, but here's a quick alternative view. I've had a SPOT1 for 4 years, and it just occured to me, I've NEVER actually pushed any of the buttons, other than to enable the continuous...

From their datasheet: •On device SOS button for standalone emergency operation So if your iphone is as broken as you are, it will still get the 911 out. They've also added apparently 14 separate user pre-programmed messages (rather than the original 1, or 2 for the next gen unit) that you can send u...

international phonetic alphabet As long as everybody is being nitpicky, in the "international phonetic alphabet", it would be a bunch of funny little symbols that nobody understands which are supposed to tell you how to pronounce a word when you look it up in a dictionary. However, under ...

The best time is to leave at midnight YVR, wake up in Mexico city I agree completely. That's the flight we were supposed to be on. 11:59PM departure. Not sure if that flight still exists in their schedule, as of the end of October they had replaced it with a flight at 1PM (i.e. right after lunch). ...

There's a reason Mexicana flights are cheap -- they SUCK royally!! We were very nearly screwed completely on my last vacation (October this year) thanks to them. Booked a flight from YVR to Cancun via Mexico City, 2 months in advance directly with the airline. Showed up at the airport the usual 3 ho...

For a really lightweight and nearly indestructible (check out http://www.vholdr.com/node/5607 :shock: for example) helmetcam, try www.VholdR.com. I have one of their original ones and have obtained some pretty cool video (like the crash and burn link above -- my buddy, not me), but their latest and ...

wbwb: I'd suggest you probably don't want to base your choice of school on comments on the forum here. Every instructor out there has a pool of disciples who believe they walk on water, but I guarantee every instructor has weaknesses and bad habits they will inadvertantly pass along to their student...

Darren -- aside from the "other drivers" question it seems mostly personal preference. I drive my wife's auto SUV on plenty of steep stuff and it works fine, but I still prefer the stick in my dakota for the most part. When the road gets gnarly you won't be shifting much anyhow and won't p...

Lawrence -- if you reread the whole thread, you'll see that's exactly what the last bunch of posts were about. We all agree Spot's a promising system, but the caveats about transmission in heavy tree cover, etc. need to be observed. I've continued to try mine at various times, locations, and activit...

Sounds like you are looking for life insurance, not medical insurance. My wife and I have a policy with TransAmerica Life. The quote roughly doubled when we told them we climbed and ww kayaked. I wasn't a paraglider at the time, but the nice thing about the term policy we have is it didn't matter wh...