Spotty Spot

I've definitely noticed a degradation in my spot reporting to the point of most likely not-renewing my subscription when it expires this year. I've used it enough to know it's not battery (several sets of new lithium) or unit placement. It just isn't reporting in locations where it used to and I even have both cell phone and GPS service. My wife and I have pretty much decided cell service has improved to the point with Sena calls and Life360 coverage we are satisfied.

My unit is one of the second generation ones, I also used a first gen one, and is probably 3 years old. I don't really know if it's just my unit or whether Spot satellite leasing has been reduced, and there's no way to tell other than to ask if others have noticed any degradation of service.

Has your Spot service been working as well as it has in the past?

Mine worked great on my way to/from Moonshine but others that ride more often are probably going to provide better responses.

Mellow said:

Mine worked great on my way to/from Moonshine but others that ride more often are probably going to provide better responses.

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Kind of hard to see but here's a screenshot of my trips so far this year. You can see several large gaps if you look closely; the Moonshine run wasn't so bad, but Texas (RanchSToc) and current trip (CampSToc and FerrySToc) definitely have many gaps.

Tom,
I have experienced the same. Relatively long stretches with no "ping". I do know that the orientation of the Spot has a lot to do with how good it works. I used to just carry it in my side pocket of my jacket and it worked reasonably well. Then it started to be very intermittent. It works fine if it is sitting flat in my tank bag though. My daughter was carrying it in a waistband pocket of her backpack and it hardly worked at all. Once moved to a more "open" location, it started to work much better although still not as good as advertised. The deterioration of its operation, over the last couple of years, makes one wonder if there isn't something up with Spot itself.
If I can find a viable alternative, I think I will cancel my subscription. Problem is my daughter uses it for climbing and back country skiing and she goes were there is limited or no cell service.

Rod

Somebody get warp drive installed???

drrod said:

Tom,
I have experienced the same...... I do know that the orientation of the Spot has a lot to do..... . I used to just carry it in my side pocket of my jacket and it worked reasonably well........ The deterioration of its operation, over the last couple of years, makes one wonder if there isn't something up with Spot itself.

Rod

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I've carried a Spot for 2 generations over 4 years on every trip with the same orientation. I'm sure the deterioration is equipment related, either the Spot itself or the reduction of satellite coverage (leasing satellites is expensive). ..... I also have noted that my deterioration of service seems to be related directly to weather deterioration. It used to work fine on a cloudy or high humidity day ....

I recently dropped the full tracking... Just use the OK/CUST/Help for my canned messgs. ( do it at all stops - gas,rest food,etc )

In the last month havn't notice any lack of sensitivity. Everyone went thru and location is right on +/- 15ft.
But then again, Im not in full track so battery would be high when a messg goes out

My SPOT Gen 3 has worked fine since I got it and my SPOT 2 worked fine before that. I have mine mounted on the left handle bar with a Ram mount setup.

ST-venture said:

My SPOT Gen 3 has worked fine since I got it and my SPOT 2 worked fine before that.......

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So did mine until this year. To make this thread useful please just reply with very recent experience.

I realize I probably should have waited a few months before asking other's experience this year, but I've had over 7,000 spotty spot miles so far this year and my subscription comes up for it's $159 annual renewal this month .

Tom

TPadden said:

my subscription comes up for it's $159 annual renewal this month .

Tom

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Found out I was pulling my tracks from my GPS log anyway.... so, 2 months ago, I dropped the live track AND saved 1/3 the cost of renewal. It still give all the other canned messgs and the SOS.
I find that now I run a Ping track about every 1-2 hours ( not counting start/stop for day ).

But haven't notice any diff. Wonder if the more crappy weather may be blocking some of the signals..ie; rain.
But also the Track runs every ten mins and if it doesn't make it the unit skips it till the next ten

PS... spot's been pushing their Sat phone too lately.... wonder if its a band width issue with the sats?

Tom Mac 04a said:

I recently dropped the full tracking... Just use the OK/CUST/Help for my canned messgs. ( do it at all stops - gas,rest food,etc )

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That's an option since all my OK's have gone through.

I agree that the Spot service is spotty, and I intended to cancel my subscription. Except it was on automatic renewal and I did not take action when it was time to do so. So it's paid for for another year, but after that : Bye Bye Spotty Spot!

Spot has always had times where - if you are sub'd to the tracking service - it will show missed pings. However, it's not like one area never gets coverage, it's simply a ping sent to the sat doesn't get received. It could be weather, cloud coverage, temperature, altitude, who knows... If you are using the spot to track your location precisely every 20 mins, It won't do it or it can't guarantee a 100% return of good pings... The idea is that if you go off the road - let's say in one of those areas where you had a missed ping - it will continue to ping and eventually will get many good tracks... No one is going to go looking for you because the spot showed a 20 min or even 1 hr section missing... they will after several hours typically... that's when it becomes useful.

I like looking at the tracks on mine but I don't use it as an 'accurate' log off my whereabouts... it's simply something that will return where I was if something had happened and I stopped moving. The deadspots most see are only missed pings... that's it, then, later on it gets a good one... they aren't really dead spots where coverage is missing - at least that's not how I see it.

I don't know the situation behind the scenes at SPOT so I can't tell you anything about how they pay for sat coverage or if there are levels of coverage... My spot seems to work as good as it ever has.. I know amorely tested the newer one w/5 min pings I think and it was far more accurate in showing his tracks.

I agree with Joe.....mostly. There have been gaps in my "trail" but it usually resumes. There have been glaring exceptions though and I don't know what they are due to but they usually happen in the mountains so it may be blocked signal. eg. my daughter was on a back country ski trip last winter. The last "ping" was the center of a frozen lake. Turned out that the Spot has just quit and everything was OK but it sure got my attention. Peculiar thing, in this particular instance, was that was the last ping for the whole day, even when she got back to the car where it had worked initially. Probably due to where she was carrying it but still.......
I have a few more months left on my subscription. If it does not improve, I will probably cancel the tracking.

Rod

TPadden said:

So did mine until this year. To make this thread useful please just reply with very recent experience.

I realize I probably should have waited a few months before asking other's experience this year, but I've had over 7,000 spotty spot miles so far this year and my subscription comes up for it's $159 annual renewal this month .

Tom

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I have used my SPOT 3 several times in the last month and it worked fine for me, but mostly just local stuff, nothing cross country yet.
Again I have mine mounted high on the left handle bar with a Ram mount. That may make the difference.

Just before Moonshine there was an outage confirmed by Spot it didn't last that long but there were 4 of us together each with a spot and none of us had a track for some time. But it did get corrected. I have a first Generation Spot and it works fine.

I've got the Spot I and it can sometimes "miss" locations if I'm in forested or hilly areas. Forested or hilly certainly doesn't describe most of the route you show on the interstates in the vicinity of Ft. Worth/Dallas though. Can't imagine why you would show no locations there unless it was weather related(???).

I hope Spot isn't on a downhill trend as it is a very useful service.

I recently had a problem I've never seen before where I had one location off by 6 or 7 miles. The thread about it is HERE. I wrote Spot about it but never received a reply.

Mellow said:

....... However, it's not like one area never gets coverage, it's simply a ping sent to the sat doesn't get received. It could be weather,.......The deadspots most see are only missed pings... that's it, then, later on it gets a good one...

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My equipment or theirs, the return from FerrySToc confirmed my decision to cancel my service - you can look at the plot and tell EXACTLY where the weather was. In the past years I never experienced any loss of coverage in weather and I just don't trust it anymore ....... if your ride ENDS anytime after those missed pings you might as well carry a whistle ...... "last seen somewhere south of Huntsville"

TPadden said:

My equipment or theirs, the return from FerrySToc confirmed my decision to cancel my service - you can look at the plot and tell EXACTLY where the weather was. In the past years I never experienced any loss of coverage in weather and I just don't trust it anymore ....... if your ride ENDS anytime after those missed pings you might as well carry a whistle ...... "last seen somewhere south of Huntsville"

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Although I've got a beef with Spot concerning the reliability of obtaining accurate points (see link in my post above), I think where bad weather is concerned, it's to be expected sometime. Even though like you, I don't recall having had a problem in bad weather, since owning my Spot I, I've not ridden in a lot of stormy weather anyway. Maybe the intensity of the weather and/or thickness of cloud cover is a factor.

I thought I'd see if Spot had something on their website about it. Here's what I found in their FAQ:


From: http://www.findmespot.com/en/faq/

Title of FAQ article: Is track spacing dependent upon location in the world?

Satellite service is wireless and requires a clear line of sight toward the satellite; therefore, the service is inherently subject to transmission and reception limitations caused by: (i) your location, including conditions that obstruct the line of sight between you and the Satellite Systems; (ii) the condition of the Satellite Systems and ground stations; (iii) the condition of your SPOT Messenger; and (iv) weather conditions, atmospheric conditions, magnetic interference, environmental, and other conditions beyond SPOT?s or the Satellite Systems? control.

Mick said:

Although I've got a beef with Spot concerning the reliability of obtaining accurate points (see link in my post above), I think where bad weather is concerned, it's to be expected sometime. Even though like you, I don't recall having had a problem in bad weather, since owning my Spot I, I've not ridden in a lot of stormy weather anyway. Maybe the intensity of the weather and/or thickness of cloud cover is a factor.

I thought I'd see if Spot had something on their website about it. Here's what I found in their FAQ:


From: http://www.findmespot.com/en/faq/

Title of FAQ article: Is track spacing dependent upon location in the world?

Satellite service is wireless and requires a clear line of sight toward the satellite; therefore, the service is inherently subject to transmission and reception limitations caused by: (i) your location, including conditions that obstruct the line of sight between you and the Satellite Systems; (ii) the condition of the Satellite Systems and ground stations; (iii) the condition of your SPOT Messenger; and (iv) weather conditions, atmospheric conditions, magnetic interference, environmental, and other conditions beyond SPOT’s or the Satellite Systems’ control.

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I know all that; I've been using Spot for years, and believe me I ride a lot (40-50K a year) and know what to expect from my Spot. My service has deteriorated PERIOD; it is much more Spotty than in the past. I KNOW it has deteriorated recently and has to do with Spot equipment either theirs or mine, not "transmission or reception limitations".

I was just trying to determine whether the deterioration I am experiencing was due to specifically my Spot or their Satellite coverage. For me it is now moot because I'm dumping the $159 yearly service.

Tom