The spot unit will not exactly have a clear view of the sky as is recommended. Our box will be made from 1.5" foam insulation board and wrapped in a space blanket. While I would guess that the sending of coordinate updates would go through the insulation, the space blanket is radar reflecting, so I figured that I'd better test.
I placed the spot in a quick box constructed from the foam and wrapped it up like a shiny Christmas present in a chunk of the space blanket. I then set it on the back porch exactly where I did the other tests to let it do it's tracking. I thought it might be interesting to see if I did get updates, but they are even more loosely grouped than the previous test. That might indicate that it is not able to see as many gps satellites as it was in the clear.
Update: I left the unit out there for over an hour and had not gotten any updates, so I unwrapped it and the gps updates resumed. I left the container out over night and saw that the distance between the furthest two points was approximately 400 ft. That means a search radius of roughly 200 ft at best.
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