Delorme InReach Tracker: 2-minute tracking, GPS altitude.

The ‘AvWeb’ emag recently posted an article from Oshkosh in which they mentioned that Delorme had demoed a new firmware upgrade to their InReach satellite tracker (similar to SPOT’s tracker, but it uses the truly world-wide Iridium constellation instead of Globalstar) that supports position reporting intervals as low as 2 minutes.  This would be really good news for soaring and other ‘fast movers’ because SPOTs fixed 10-minute tracking interval (coupled with their very irritating policy of caching/delaying position information through their API) is just too coarse for contest tracking.  Also, the InReach device provides GPS altitude reporting natively, while the SPOT unit does not (rumor has it that SPOT 3 will support altitude sometime in the next year or so).

After seeing the article, Mark Hawkins and I got in touch with Steve Wells, Director of Enterprise Sales at Delorme, at his home in Santa Barbara.  He was able to show us Delorme’s mapping configuration (analogous to SPOTs ‘Shared Page’), and it looked pretty nice.  We talked with Steve about our interest in the shorter tracking interval, and the market represented by ‘fast movers’ such as gliders, paragliders, general aviation power planes, etc, and showed him our current contest/club tracking SPOT maps.  Steve seemed enthusiastic, and agreed to send a loaner to Mark so he could integrate its messaging output into our Hawke Tracking SPOT maps.

Our grand plan is to get it integrated into the Uvalde WGC tracking map and then get the InReach unit into a glider cockpit during the WGC so we can demonstrate the advantages and desirability of 2-minute vs 10-minute tracking intervals (not to mention altitude reporting!).  Ideally we would like to get it into a glider that already has a SPOT, so we could all see an apples to apples comparison.  Failing that, any glider at the WGC would do ;-).

The good news for InReach:

  • About 125 hours run time on 2ea AA Lithium-Ion batteries (available at any Wal-Mart)
  • Tracking intervals down to 2 minutes (rumored to go down to 1 minute, but this is unconfirmed as yet)
  • Natively reports speed, heading and GPS altitude
  • Ping capability (can get latest position reports asynchronously)
  • Delivery confirmation for canned messages & SOS activation – nice!
  • Two-way texting feature(requires a paired smartphone or Delorme PN-60w)
  • Seasonal subscriptions are available in 4-month increments (I would probably need the 8-month one)

The bad news for InReach

  • Larger and heavier than SPOT2:  3.4″ H (4.77″ including antenna) x 2.85″ W x 1.73″ D, vs 3.7″ H  x 2.6″ W x 1″ D for SPOT2.
  • Higher initial price – about $250 vs  about $100 for SPOT2
  • Pricing structure is more expensive than for SPOT;  $25/month for unlimited tracking is about 1.5 times equivalent SPOT costs

As an example (taken from the Delorme website), a ‘Recreation’ full-year subscription is $24.95/month ($300/year) and includes unlimited tracking and 40 text messages/month (hopefully I won’t land out more than 40 times/month!).  the Seasonal plan for this same level of service is actually more expensive ($39.95/month X 8 months = $320/year)

I currently am paying about $200/year for my SPOT subscription, so for an extra $100/year (about $8/month) I could get 2-minute position reports, GPS elevation, heading and speed – wow!  Just between you, me, and the gatepost, if my partner Mark Hawkins is able to get the loaner InReach integrated into our Hawke Tracking maps, and the actual performance confirms the 2-minute tracking interval and altitude reporting, I’m putting my SPOT up on eBay and getting an InReach device, sooner rather than later!

I hope to get the unit into a U.S. glider for a day or so at the WGC.  If any other team is interested in trying the unit at the WGC, please contact me at paynterf@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do.

Frank

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