inReach Messages Out of Order

Not making excuses. But there are a lot of moving parts in the message chain. Delays are inherent in the system. There are things you can do to improve the timeliness of message reception.

In all of the following scenarios, remember that you need a clear view of the sky in order to receive or send data. The wider the sky view, the better. Also remember that, depending on your plan, some of these techniques may have an associated cost.

You can manually check for messages. If you do this in a location where you have a clear view of the sky, this is a very reliable technique (assuming that none of the moving parts is actually down at the time). A manual check uses a positive response/acknowledgement technique which should fetch any messages waiting for your unit.

You can also send a message or a sent track point. This is also reliable in the sense that sending data also checks for messages.

Finally, you can decrease the interval at which the unit automatically checks for messages. Without going into too much detail, this is different from a manual check or sending data. This is a passive "listen" for messages. It's less reliable than the other two techniques. Even if messages are waiting, and even if you have a clear view of the sky, you are not guaranteed to receive the waiting messages. But still, the more frequently you check, the more likely you are to get messages in a timely manner. The tradeoff here is battery life.

While message delays are relatively common, I have rarely seen messages arrive out of order. I can conceive of several ways that could happen, but have no evidence to support any of the guesses. I do know that the "passive listen" operation is somewhat biased towards reception of recently sent messages. That is, you are more likely to receive a recently sent message than one which was sent some hours previously.

One other piece of conventional wisdom. Like the GPS signal, the Iridium signal is blocked by water - including your body. Sending and receiving is also sensitive to the orientation of the antennas. The GPS antenna is a patch antenna facing out from the front of the unit. It functions best when the unit is facing straight up (parallel to the ground). The Iridium antenna is the protrusion sticking up from the top. It functions best when the unit is upright (90 degrees to the ground). When communication is important, most of us carry the unit on a pack strap at roughly a 45 degree angle. This does help some. For example, the results are clearly better than carrying the unit on my belt.

I have it mounted in a RAM mount on a snowmobile handlebar so the exposure is good. I might try sending tracking points so it checks more often like you said. Also I notice what you mention about getting more recent messages first, I think that's what happens. It doesn't check for messages on its own for some reason, which is a recent affliction, and then when I finally send another message it goes and gets a new message that was recently sent...such as "why the heck haven't you got back to me". Then after that, I get the original message that the person had sent me a long time ago as part of another conversation. Not overly helpful.

In a perfect world, I would expect that sending a message would retrieve everything that was pending in some unspecified order. AFAIK (which isn't very far), the "more recent messages first" thing applies to the passive listen operations. When a message is new, the Garmin servers make a concerted attempt to deliver it (even via passive listen operations) for the first hour or so. After that, they still attempt delivery but in less intensive way.

Skeld, what is the interval you have the unit checking for messages at? If you are only out for the day and can charge the unit at night it should have enough battery power to run all day checking every 5 minutes. When I am in need of good communication I will sometimes turn my inReach to continuous checking so the messages flow quickly. The battery won't last all day but the messaging is very fluent.

Skeld, what is the interval you have the unit checking for messages at? If you are only out for the day and can charge the unit at night it should have enough battery power to run all day checking every 5 minutes. When I am in need of good communication I will sometimes turn my inReach to continuous checking so the messages flow quickly. The battery won't last all day but the messaging is very fluent.

Ok, didn't know I could control this but I checked and it was on 10 minutes. Also, I was still on the old firmware and I just did that update. So maybe that will help. I usually am out for 2 days but I shut it off at night. Rare that it gets below 80% battery.

10 minutes is the default interval. As HL649 says, Continuous will get you the best shot a receiving messages in passive listening mode. However, this results in keeping the Iridium radio on all the time. This is very hard on battery life. Be sure to test this before you take it out in the back country to see what kind of time you get. Also note that this is still a passive listen.

It's quite likely that using Continuous is harder on the battery than sending track points. If battery life is an issue, you might experiment with message reception while sending tracks instead of using continuous listen. Assuming, of course, that it's not cost-prohibitive under your plan. Granted, all but the most expensive plan limit you to 10 minute minimum tracking intervals. So the unit isn't checking for messages any more frequently than that. On the other hand, sending a track point requires an acknowledgement from the network and will reliably receive any pending messages. The reliability offsets the longer check interval. Just a thought.