Anyone know what sorta price you would look at paying for a PLB these days? I might have to look into getting me one, particularly as Im starting to do rougher tracks etc these days.
And @kreig
"You don't take a young Scout, drop them at the top of a mountain, and say, "Figure it out. Get yourself home". No. We teach them in layers. So why are we less patient with adults who have never been taught? "
Thats the sorta thing that gets done to venturers haha. Perhaps not the top of a mountain though =p.
I brought one recently, it cost me $530 from Ballinger's Hunting and fishing in Christchurch.
that was the best price within New Zealand for a ResQLink ACR PLB, the other suppliers were selling them for $630.
A McMurdo 220 was about $500 as well, they are smaller but the Locator Beacon Charity use the ACR ones so I thought that was the best brand to buy.
You can buy a Follow Me (FastFind) for about $300, good tracking data, allows pre programmed message to be sent but there is a US$ 150 per annum fee to register it...so you would be looking at $1200 for the 6 year life of the unit.
This post has been edited by the author on 4 May 2015 at 15:35.
I recently replaced my beacon recently I got a NZ coded KTI SA2G PLB from an australian based website - cost around $300 nz including delivery and it has a 10 year battery life.
Here is a link if anyone is intrested.
http://www.skippersmate.com.au/kti-safety-alert-sa2g-nz-406mhz-plb-personal-locator-beacon/
I have not been able to find any difference between it and the PLBs for sale in NZ - but it is certainly a lot cheaper.
I think, like many things, enjoyment of the backcountry is entirely subjective and - so long as you're not breaking rules or being anti-social - do whatever cuts your cake. People have varying physical and mental abilities; likes and dislikes.
My aging Galaxy S4, in bomb proof case, provides the following:
Gps, Topo map (with gps-integrated "current location" function (extremely useful in rain on clagged out tops)), camera, vid camera, document archive (route notes, bus tickets, etc), Kindle Books, music, vid player (rarely used), jot pad, MS Word, first aid and survival manuals, electronic games (rarely used), and even the occasional phone call and txt.
I switch it off when not needed, carry spare batteries, and as long as I don't use it for more than a couple of hours entertainment a day I get about 5 days per battery.
Weight saving: significant. Consolidation of items: massive.
Want to turn it into a sat phone with a sat sleeve (so as to keep the whanau more informed and at ease, get wx updates, change travel arrangements, etc) and might then consider retiring the eperb.
Rarely failed to get gps signal (not even at the bottom of valleys in Fiordland). I realise depending on that could easily put one in a survival situation (I always carry map and compass too) but then you're more likely to have map and compass made useless by clagged out visibility than you are to fail to get a gps signal.
Shelled out for a Garmin Oregon, then got given the phone and discovered it did all and much, much more that the Oregon does.
@bradley1
"You can buy a Follow Me (FastFind) for about $300, good tracking data, allows pre programmed message to be sent but there is a US$ 150 per annum fee to register it...so you would be looking at $1200 for the 6 year life of the unit"
been trying to find the Follow me" on the net, but cant. do you have a website for it?
cheers
ps, there is a very light PLB out now, called rescueMe. fairly check about $500nzd
@duncan1: "I recently replaced my beacon recently I got a NZ coded KTI SA2G PLB from an australian based website - cost around $300"
That sounds like a good deal for something that's already NZ-coded. You're probably avoiding the GST with that deal, but even without that it looks good.
For some reason, even on the same site, that model's cheaper than a comparable PLB like an ACR ResQLink+, which weighs almost negligibly less. Maybe with the KTI SA2G being Australian made.
So why would someone buy a ResQLink? And does anyone have a clue how to reliably compare PLBs on anything except for weight and price? Which criteria do you use?
Especially since there have been a few situations out there where PLBs haven't worked optimally. Is this always due to environmental circumstances, or is it possibly because some PLBs are constructed to a lower quality than others?
Independent reviews for stuff like GPS sensitivity, signal transmission and durability would be really useful because it's stuff that seriously matters at the one and only time you'd actually want to use the device, but I can't imagine how anyone could conveniently test that type of thing given the nature of PLBs. Even looking at the 6 reviews on that site, virtually all are talking about the sale process or saying it's a great price for "a PLB" instead of referring to the quality of the device itself.
This post has been edited by the author on 4 May 2015 at 22:51.
Hugh, the Venturers do get a lot more adventurous, but still, if they're brand new Venturers, they don't just get left to their own devices.
It's all about layers, my friend. We're all friggin' onions! :D :P
@izogi - It would appear that Cospas-Sarsat - which is an international body conducts testing and approval of PLB's and there is a list of approved and tested units on their website.
http://cospas-sarsat.int/en/selecting-a-406-mhz-beacon-model
Both the KTI and the ACR ResQLink are tested as having a Type 2 approval which is for at least 24 hours of operation at -20 degrees Celsius. There is some other information on the test reports that I don’t really understand - but I would imagine that if you purchase a Cospas-Sarsat approved PLB it should work as required.
There is also AS/NZS 4280.2 which is a Australian/NZ standard for PLBs - the KTI beacon is manufactured to this standard – not sure about the ACR.
Hi @duncan. Thanks for that and yes I appreciate that they're tested to meet certain standards. I think I'm just curious about how people differentiate between them.
If it were a car analogy (because car analogies are so awesome), could you imagine choosing between different cars if the only things you were allowed to know were that they'd all been verified by the government to have 4 wheels, approved space for 2 people, a full tank of petrol and could operate at 100km/h as long as the road meets some particular known standard? It's great that they can do all those things, but as far as we know they're still all the same. Reviews to compare models aren't available because nobody who buys cars actually uses them for driving anywhere unless it's an emergency, so nobody can run any independent tests in a practical way to compare performance or anything else.
I'd probably go for the cheapest at the time--the only metrics I really had for a PLB were price and weight, and being able to register within NZ. But I'd also be wondering why on earth anyone had bought anything else. Maybe that's why my ACR ResQLinq+ came with so many extra bits n' pieces in the box like a strobe light.
This post has been edited by the author on 5 May 2015 at 08:53.
I differentiated mainly on price – The KTI has a battery expiry of April 2026 – so works out the be a cost of around $28 a year. ACR ResQLink with a 5 year battery life works out to be around $100 a year – assuming that you never need to use your PLB. At work we have a ResQLink and it is pretty similar in size and weight to the KTI unit.
I’ve made the assumption that being a tested and approved unit that the KTI will work as well as any other PLB in an emergency situation.
