> The "free alternatives" are, right now, the USCG approved and recommended > "float plan" and have worked pretty well for me and many of my friends for > 30 years. Any system can fail but none of us have caused unnecessary > searches and our families have managed to not panic. Still, I have several friends (not myself) who have been overdue in the wilderness and search and rescue was called out (not by me) when they were late, using the "free alternative". It may not have happened to you or many of your friends, but don't kid yourself that it doesn't happen often. I'll bet you and your friends wouldn't misuse SPOT to send out unnecessary S&R either. There's not enough data yet to compare whether the SPOT system will increase or decrease system load. My personal feeling is that agencies will quickly learn to understand which kind of SPOT "missing data" generated calls they need to respond to and which ones they don't. It's going to be difficult to track the S&R calls that aren't made due to a SPOT OK message, for that matter. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jul 22 2008 - 14:58:08 PDT
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