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Anyone have any experience with satellite phones? I'm trying to plan a camping trip that will be out of cell phone range and would like a way to keep in touch in case of an emergency.

Looking for some recommendations on brands, or even companies that rent them out.

Thanks

I used an InReach by delorme. It's an awesome little device that has a $20/month subscription charge. You can send and receive texts, forward maps and location data, and use it as a gps unit.


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I've rented one from GlobalcomSatPhone.com for our Pecos River trips. It is the Iridium 9505A. Needed it for a week and with everything minus the minutes it is about $90. Then it's $1.70 a minute if we use it. We called home a couple of times to talk with the ladies, and also called a buddy to get weather updates. I'll never go in the middle of nowhere like that without it.

First time we took one, we had to use. Pecos Flood 2014.

This week marks the three year anniversary of our ill-fated Pecos trip. I was reading over the story that my buddy Bert had written about our experience, and came across this little excerpt I had forgotten about. Thought it might be relevant here.

"Dustin stayed with us, and after the helo departed, we chatted about our trip. He mentioned that it was unusual for most paddlers to carry a satellite phone and that most often when paddlers were stranded by a rising river, the rescue crews were called in either by the outfitter who put the paddlers in or by relatives who called when they didn’t show up on time. This usually meant hours of searching for the lost paddlers. In our case, the crew locked in our coordinates, and that’s exactly where they were headed when I flagged them down. "

*Dustin is a Tactical Flight Officer with the DPS

http://lonestarchronicles.com/back-to-t ... the-flood/

Thanks Mr. Cuervo

Aggroman, thank you for the recommendation, and the read, quite the adventure indeed.
Coincidentally, that's the reason I started looking at sat. Phones, in case of flooding.

I'm not sure which one I'll get yet, looks like most sat phones out there's are barley water resistant, which can be an inconvenience when having to use them in heavy rain.

Appreciate the input fellas!

I also have one of those InReach communicators, the yellow version. I think the difference is that one Cuervo has is also a GPS unit with mapping. Mine doesn't have that but I opt to use my smartphone with a hiking app that I really like for the usability.

The reason I did the communicator was because they have plans where you activate it for 30days at a time, instead of paying every month. But I guess you can just rent a sat phone for the period you need it. I kinda liked the idea of texts and tracking, thinking it's easier to send a text than get a phone signal. But maybe the sat deals have all that now. This thing works if you don't need to have an actual phone conversation.

I used mine fishing backcountry in the Rockies last year and it worked great everywhere I used it. Tracks sent to Delorme's site that are viewable by whoever you shared the map link with. And of course it has an SOS function, which is a big reason for getting it.