Well Steve I read about them, of course Cariboo raved about em, so I recommended them at a work safety meeting so that our geologists out alone on the mountain can be tracked. The boss bought two immediately

Talked to my Mrs about it as of course I wanted one for hunting, especially solo hunts which she worries about. Then we had to justify it for a bit more than 3 weeks a year usage.

Well, I often work later than planned, showed the mrs how I can send her a message letting her know this. (no cell service and limited radio service to home from work) That was all it took to convince her that it is more than just a toy, so my business will be buying one (Mrs is picking it up this weekend)

The guys at work love them, often in remote areas with no radio coverage due to terrain but having SPOT gives them a peace of mind knowing that if things go sideways, yes help will arrive

Cheers
Wildcat

I bought one last week. Tried it moose hunting yesterday. Worked great. Still learning about it though. Family's happy though getting messages during the day. The cost isn't really important in my opinion.

Just out of curiosity how many of you that have purchased the Spot also opted to buy the optional GEOS Search & Rescue insurance package for $7.99? I personally spent the extra money thinking that $100,000.00 can go a long way towards getting my sorry A$$ out of a bad situation.

Margun

Hmmm I am a SPOT PRO STAFF..

slopeshunter..any questions just ask or send a PM..

Margun..I personally did NOT spend the extra for. S& R as BC covers ALL those costs...I "believe" some locations ie USA do NOT have those "free" taxpayer services.....just "my oppinion"

cheers

ps I just arrived home and every day Susan watched our progress on the ocean on the rd and on the hunt...worked awesome..

cheers

Steven

Thanks, I will as they arise.

I've started using mine as sort of a personal data collection tool. Once I'm home at the PC I go to the spot website, log in and export the points to the format that I can then load into Google Earth. Then a add placemarkers, text, whatever comes to mind (wind direction, weather, what route I took, what I saw..). I see this becoming a good reference tool for myself in the future.

Oh ya, my wife loves getting the messages during the day when I'm out.

So far works SPOT on! (no pun intended).

Glad to hear....a LOT of very experienced outdoorspersons are very favorably impressed with them...welcome to the club..

cheers
'
Steven

Hey everyone,

Thought I'd share a little lesson I learned the other night.

I have a friend who's said he'd come out and help me if I were to get a moose, so I set him up as the only person on my HELP button with a message of something like "HELP - I got my moose and need help. If I didnt need help I wouldn't have pressed the button".

So Sunday night I'm prepping to go hunting on Monday and decide I should put his cel number into spot. Not really sure about the text msging I decide instead to put my cel number in and then go in the backyard, hit the HELP button as a test to see what I get. So I hit the button and get a text msg on my cel, all good to go. I remove my cel number and put his in, all set now.

So I'm out hunting Monday am, no moose and it's getting too hot anyway so I start heading home late morning. Driving on the hwy a truck passes me, turns around then starts honking the horn. I pull over to see my buddy get out of his truck "Where's the moose, I got the message and came out to help". I'm thinking to myself, what do you mean? What message??

And then it clicks in my head "Oh I did a test last night"...

Sorry buddy. He wasn't sore though, was kind of glad to have left work for the day. Although he was a bit upset that there wasn't a moose down.

Looking back at it, we both laughed about it:

- I totally forgot that my test had emailed him;
- He didn't notice that:
- The email had been sent Sunday night at 7pm (can't sunday hunt this area);
- He saw the email Monday morning going into work on his blackberry, somehow the map link wasn't there?? If it was he would have seen that the map was of my backyard;
- He thought that the time said "7am" and that I got the moose early monday morning. Although he also didn't realize that right now it's still dark at 7am, and that 7am is about 50 minutes before shooting light.

There was all this excitement going on and I had no clue. He talked to my wife to see if she'd heard from me. Told her I got a moose and he was heading out to help me. So now everyone at home is excited too, my wife's doing all this "moose meal planning" in her head of all the good eats we're going to have...

The season ends on friday, and that's my last chance to get out. Buddy has decided that he'll come out hunting with me for the day too.

In the end I was a little red in the face about the whole thing, but no harm done.

LESSON LEARNED: if you're gonna play around with the buttons make sure you remove everyone's emails and cels and only put your own in before you do your testing.