About a year ago as the first iPhone was coming online and it seemed like the entire world was standing in line to get one, I made a decision to wait. Partly because I couldn’t afford ~$400+ of my own money on a new phone no matter how frickin’ cool it looked or how revolutionary everybody claimed it would be. Yea it had a really slick user interface, and it rolled your iPod, cell phone, video player, web broswer, and picture frame all into an uber-thin package but it was new. Not new like a new car new but new like “nothing Apple or anybody else has ever done before so it’s really new“. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned supporting new technology these last few years – no matter what the manufacturer claims, you’ll always run into ver. 1.0 problems.

Needless to say, I’m glad I waited. Almost within the first week, users starting reporting some very interesting issues with the new iPhone: battery failures (non-user replaceable btw), sign-up difficulties (not to mention locking yourself into a two year contract with AT&T), defective units right out of the box, zero SDK support and no third party software apps, security flaws within the [iPhone Safari browser], etc. The list just seemed to go on and on as more people dug into it. Hell, within a month of release somebody had already [cracked] it so you could use it on other networks (Apple retaliated by [bricking] your iPhone if you tried to run any future updates on it via iTunes).

Well a week or two ago and the release of ver 2.0 finally arrived – [the 3G iPhone] will hit stores on July 11th. At ~$200 for the 8GB version, it’s got me interested all over again. The only decision now is, is it still [new] or just improved?

I finally found a replacement for my heavy (read: bombproof) [Katadyn Pocket Filter]. At ~20oz, it’s kind of a pig for lightweight backpacking so I’ve been keeping my eye out for a replacement. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my Pocket Filter, it’s one of the best personal ceramic water filters on the market imo – I’m just trying to shave as much weight off my pack list as possible for my upcoming 7 day AT hike here in Georgia.

[MSR (Mountain Safety Research)] finally released their Hyperflow™ model and after reading nothing but great reviews, I decided to drop the rest of my [Cabelas] gift certificate on it. Can’t beat getting a $100 piece of gear for $9!

Weighing in at ~7.5 ozs it’s roughly half the size and weight of my Pocket Filter. The unit is easy to disassemble for cleaning and contains only a few moving parts. It ships with the core filter unit, pickup hose, pre-filter for sediment, and a nifty bottle adapter. I probably won’t use the bottle adapter – I’ll just plumb in some quick-disconnects so I can fill my hydration bladder directly off the Hyperflow™. MSR claims .2 micron filtering (standard for personal filters) which will grab just about all the nasties except viruses (not too worried about water borne virus contamination in the US) via mechanical filtration.

So far my sink tests show it’s pretty easy to use and the published high-flow pump rate seems doable as long as I keep the filter clean (the unit can be back-washed via a flow-valve reversal). I think I’ll be happy with it. I’ll keep the Pocket Filter around for my BOB and use the Hyperflow™ for backpacking when I know the water isn’t going to be particularly nasty (ie. Georgia mountain streams vs. Florida swamp water).

I finally had a chance to run my latest gadget through it’s paces this weekend. My brother and I hiked the 8.8 mile [Gahuti Trail Loop] on Saturday so it was a perfect opportunity to test the GPS receiver / Satellite transmitter part of the [SPOT™]. The trail had a good mix of ravine, ridge, saddle, etc. hiking and looped around the entire compass. I had it attached to the outside of my backpack – clipped to the top lip of a pocket with the receiver tilted upwards at about a 60 degree slant.

With the “track progress” feature enabled, the product specs claim the device will send a location message out every 10 minutes or so when it has a clear LOS with the satellite network. You can tell when the device is sync’d properly because a pair of LEDs blink in unison but since I had it attached to the back of my pack, I couldn’t monitor when and where it was sync’d – I just trusted it to send out a location track whenever it could. I’ve uploaded the 4 tracking messages my web site account shows as being received for the entire 4 hour hike – I have a feeling the GPS portion of the device is much more tolerant than the satellite simplex link because my handheld GPS never skipped once during the entire 4 hours.

My “check in” message at the end of the day went through just fine but I was hanging out along a ridgeline with almost 100% horizon visability so it’s not surprising. I’ll still carry it as part of my safety kit and it’ll be nice to keep my family informed during our hikes but I’ll stick to my handheld GPS for accurate tracking and waypoint marking.

Gahuti SPOT Tracks