2 replies to this topic

[Old Crow]

( preset = the three pre-formatted messages you can send from your Inreach as many times as you like and at no additional charge)

 

This may be obvious to everyone but here goes ...

 

I include my own text and email addresses in my Inreach preset messages.  So when I send my nightly  OK, for instance, I typically hear my phone alert me to an incoming text a short time later (if I have cell phone coverage).

 

That does a couple of things for me...

 

- it tells me my message not only got up to the satellite, it also got back down and was distributed through Garmin's and SMS (text) servers and Verizon's SMS and cell phone subsystems to get to me. 

 

- it tells me whether I'm currently in reach of a cell phone tower (at least for texting) regardless of what my phone's signal-strength meter shows.  It's surprising how often the text gets through when I can't make a call.

 

- over time, it helps me gauge how reliable the Inreach system is at delivering texts and email messages. I originally started doing this with my SPOT Gen 1 which wasn't very reliable and didn't give an indication when a message had gone out.  Then it just seemed natural to keep doing it when I got my Inreach.

 

- I sometimes like to look at the email to see how my position is displayed on the Garmin Explore map that my recipients get in their email. 

 

- After returning home, I can look at my emails to see the locations where I sent out the presets.  Those are also available on my MapShare, of course, but it's a convenient place to see them.  I have also occasionally forwarded the emails to recipients I didn't have on the original distribution list for the preset message.

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[ski3pin]

We do the same. Old Crow, thanks for posting this!

[WanderingBison]

Same here. We actually use two preset message for our “home for the night” message, one that states that we likely have cell service and one that states we can only be reached by replying to the InReach message in case of emergency.

But I really like having immediate feedback - I’ll add those emails to my VIP list.

We use the third spot to have a message that states we are OK and will check back in when possible which is really useful to put our friends and family at ease when an earthquake or forest fire has affected the area we are in. It allows them to know we are OK even when we can’t respond to texts or emails because we don’t have service or because the network is overloaded.

My last tip is that we also have SpotWalla keep track of our travels, which uses the InReach pings to allow someone to check in on you. Not that exciting since you can do that from the InReach website but SpotWalla allows a couple of added benefits:

You can create secure zones that will not show you actual recent location (based on a radius) except to a specific trusted group of users, and

My favourite, I can export our travels from SpotWalla as a GPX track so I can download and save the locations where we sent our night message/overnight spot - fun to see where we’ve travelled and slept.

SpotWalla is a free service but might introduce some fees for some services in the next year or so. It takes a little getting use to but is really powerful!