Quote:
Originally Posted by illking
Great report. I just got my van back from Agile as well and had a great experience.
How do you like the Garmin Inreach? I currently have a SPOT and Garmin 62s for dirt biking and hiking. Im thinking about selling both and carrying only one device. Id love to hear your opinion on it.
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Glad for you and your Agile!
I got the Garmin mostly for the safety factor. I was by myself in some pretty out of the way places with no cell service, so I wanted to be able to summon help if I needed it. Also, I like having the messaging ability when out of cell range.
Sending messages was slightly cumbersome, tho, and, one night in Yosemite, I just gave up on that. Standing outside in the freezing cold waiting for it to engage with a satellite just wasn't fun. Maybe it was just that night, but I didn't try it again. I'll have to mess with it some more.
What was really cool, tho, was the tracking. It uses very little battery and sends your location and other info every ten minutes (or whatever interval you set) to a map you can share with whoever by an email link it sends. It can also post to Facebook, which I did, and that was great fun for me and all my map-nerd friends. But, again, it was mostly a safety factor for me. I figured if I went off the road into a deep ditch, somebody would know where to look... if only for my body
That feature worked much better than I expected. I hung it from the rear view mirror where it had a clear view of the sky. It was really interesting later to see exactly where I was on the map, the altitude, how fast I was moving, etc.
I'm still learning how to best use the features, but I can already see that the waypoint function is stellar. If nothing else, you can always use the tracking feature to get un-lost and back to your base. And that's a lot more important than just amusing your friends on Facebook.
I was looking at satellite phones when I decided to go the Garmin InReach Explorer route. I've spent a lot of time in the backcountry and wished I had the peace of mind that just the SOS button gives me. It's hooked up to the GEOS people who will send out the SAR folks if you press that button and are too disabled to answer their query. That's worth a ton to me. If you can answer, you have the ability to get whatever kind of emergency help you need.
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