Outdoor Retailer Summer Market Walkthrough: SPOT PLB, Skeletool CF, and More

Equipped.org took a trip to the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market '07 and reported back with highlights from the world of camping and survival. (Including, as my friend Fibiger initially pointed out, the carbon fiber version of that upcoming Leatherman Skeletool.)

There's too many cool things to bother excerpting completely, but here's a short list: water purification systems, including a chemical-based one from PUR; LED flashlights; new water bottles; the SPOT satellite messenger system; various knives and survival systems.

They took an extra deep dive into the SPOT Satellite Messenger [pictured], a consumer-grade personal tracker that not only allows you to be located with fidelity up to 20 feet, but allows you to send basic messages about your condition. (Including "I'm okay.") Equipped.org has some reservations about the device on the whole, but it is cheap for this sort of thing at just $150 for the initial unit, plus $100-a-year for the service. Other Personal Locator Beacons have run in the middle hundreds, plus service. (Thanks, Harrkev, for the correction.)

Oh! And because I know how many of you like the Photon LED flashlights:

David tells us that these new Nichia LEDs will be exclusive to Photon initially. As with the last LED upgrade, this one is claimed to once again almost double the light output compared to the existing Photon lights!

Even better, the new ReX from Photon is rechargeable from larger, cheaper cells, so you don't have to keep buying overpriced watch batteries. A USB adapter is coming soon.

Man, there are so many cool things I'd like to keep talking about, like the MSR E-Wing one-person tarp shelter. Go read the write-up!

Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2007 [Equipped.org]

[#1 posted by Harrkev , September 7, 2007 12:35 PM]

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Thank you for playing.

Real commercial PLB's (which cost in the neighborhood of $500 to $700), do NOT require a recurring charge. Well, they do, but that is in the form of income taxes that all Americans pay. The PLB sattelites are run by the US government, and are free for all to use.

Once you get past the initial sticker shock, the only recurring charge is replacing the battery every few years.

[#2 posted by Ben Ellison , January 28, 2008 8:21 AM]

I'm glad that the poster above, and Spot itself, do not confuse SPOT with PLBs. Both have value, but they're different. Much more about Spot, which I've tested, and PLBs at my blog, http://www.panbo.com/