Consumer technologies that use GPS to track aircraft in flight are adding features all the time, and this week one of the more popular vendors, Spidertracks, of New Zealand, announced new capabilities in its latest device, the Spider S5. The new unit retains the small footprint of the earlier models, but adds integrated Bluetooth communications to enable two-way messaging, SOS alerting, and real-time flight tracking, the company said on Wednesday. The S5 is portable, and no installation is required. Using a free app called Spidertxt, users can connect their smartphones to the S5 unit via Bluetooth, and send and receive text messages to any mobile phone on the ground.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/avionics/spidertracks-adds-real-time-features