On Sep 8, 3:47*am, "Roger Long" wrote:
....
Anyone familiar with how the Iridium sat phone system works care to
speculate on how his reported position could be so far off? *It's the same
network SPOT uses so I'm interested in that aspect of it. * I'll try to keep
my SPOT out of the sink though. ...

Well, Iridium isn't a position finding system. Are you sure that SPOT
doesn't use GPS for its position and then Iridium to send the info?
I'd also be less than amazed to find that there were transcription
errors. A common problem is that many people are unaware of the
differences between decimal degrees or degrees and decimal minutes and
degrees, minutes and seconds. I hear people having problems with
these concepts all the time over the radio and the resultant errors
are close enough to be plausible but far enough out to be a problem.

I don't want to side with the nay-sayers here but if the kid can't go
24 hours without his folks pulling the panic switch they probably
shouldn't have let him go.

-- Tom.