I would go as far as saying that phone hotspots are preferable over other devices, unless you want to use an external antenna. Anecdotally, phones seem to handle tower hand-offs more smoothly and intelligently than any USB modems or jetpack hotspots I've used over the years.
Yeah, a contract is a non-starter for me. I only need data when I need it, not day after day all twelve months of the year. In 2015 I bought a little whizbang from Walmart for fifty bucks, plus another fifty for 5 gigs of Verizon data. Worked like a charm for a brief jaunt to Kansas, then started dropping signal once I got back to Michigan. I see the new units are getting good reviews, but they're a lot pricier. Whatever I get, I'll buy it outright.
Nope. Just that I'm cheap and use Virgin mobile for my phone.
The advent of SAILS on the 88Ds has a downside: significantly higher bandwidth for every hour you have GRLevel3 open, compared to before. I was floored at how quickly I went through my data last season. I normally get the 4 GB package for my hotspot and don't have any problem staying under that, even during an active May. But last year, I'd be up to that after 4-5 chases, easily. I'm not aware of any option in the software to throttle back the frequency of looking for new updates, so the only way to mitigate this may be simply to leave GR3 closed until it's really needed on a given day, and also to close it as soon as you're done actively chasing.
