Weather Causes Chaos

For all I know my one could be a small brick, with a plastic coat and a couple of glued on buttons. Might put it on trademe and put the money towards getting a smaller one. Having one built into a wrist watch would be ideal :), atleast one small enough to clip onto the front strap of a pack.

I wonder how much of the size is the locating technology and how much is the battery?

Is there some technical restraint which prevents the transmission/receipt of short text messages by a 406 MHz beacon-type device. Probably not on the same protocol because it's already been designed and only has space for GPS positioning information and some basic identity information, but I'm confused why they haven't been designed with richer kinds of data in mind. Why not chuck a tiny like keypad on these things and let people send a 128 character message like "Stuck behind some river and will be out 2 days late. 3 days of food max. Notify 03-555-2944." ... or "2 people (m & f) fell 30 metres, both have severe internal bleeding and need emergency evac, administering CPR to both". If it were possible to do it so that an operator could transmit the other way via satellite without the complete overhead of a mountain radio, there could be a whole conversation channel and it would give people expert support from outside when they're not quite sure if it's the right time to call for emergency help. I don't have an EPIRB yet but I'm tempted to get one. I also *like* to think I wouldn't activate one of these unless it was a dire emergency, but without being in such a situation I don't know how I'd react. I definitely wouldn't want to skimp on activating it and look back in hindsight to realise that someone died because I made a bad judgement and didn't want to bother someone. There are obvious examples of times when people have activated them when they probably shouldn't have, but sometimes it's not so clear-cut and obvious. In a first aid course that I did a while ago (and I imagine many people would have similar experiences), the ultimate answer to nearly every scenario was "Get on your mountain radio and have the person evacuated as soon as possible" or "Activate your EPIRB now" or "Send out a couple of people to raise the alarm now". Granted that this *is* a first aid course and hopefully most people would encounter very few such situations in a lifetime, but it reminded me that there are certain occasions when it's really not obvious on the outside that help is needed. (eg. Internal bleeding after a knock on the head, or maybe inhaling water after a bad fall into a river, and so on.) It's really important to be able to assess a situation well and make a good decision. I can't find the reference, but I was reading recently that a chap who fell about 20 metres from a hang glider (was it near Christchurch?) basically died because he was conscious on the ground, and he asked people not to call an ambulance because he didn't want to bother them! And I've noticed a couple of other occasions through the media lately where people have been near drowning, but have tried to tell people not to rescue them because they don't think they can afford to be rescued! For these kinds of reasons, I'm finding it a little concerning that there's a growing amount of *bad* publicity around activating EPIRBs. It discourages polite people from activating them when they definitely should be. It sounds as if SAR would probably prefer it if everyone carried mountain radios instead of EPIRB's. They can get so much more information about what the actual problem is with a mountain radio, and be able to communicate with the people and assess what's needed without actually having to go there. I notice there's even a letter in the recent FMC Bulletin (175) where a police SAR person has suggested exactly this based on experiences with a recent Penn Creek Hut rescue in the Tararuas, where a couple had a mountain radio with them and it all went very smoothly. The weight issues and other practicalities probably mean they're nowhere near as enticing for most people as a magical emergency helicopter-come-now buttons. If everyone had mountain radios, there would probably also be collateral problems like increasing amounts of radio traffic, but working around that must be a lot cheaper than responding to every EPIRB activation. On the other hand. there must be some kind of reason why there isn't popular technology for sending and possibly receiving short amounts of emergency text via satellite from a device about the size of a 406 MHz beacon using the same techniques that existing beacons use to transmit the data they do already... or it more an issue of getting the infrastructure in place when it's mostly designed and developed overseas with goals that might not be quite the same?

The now defunct ICONet satellite mobile phone / 2-way pager system was going to support this functionality, so it is technically possible (they used the mobile phone GSM protocol, including SMS, though with modified timers to cope with the satellite lag). Don't know if any of the others (globalstar, etc) do this though.

Mountain radios: If you are gravely injured, then finding a spot with a good view of the sky, stringing out the antenna, persisting in calling until atmosperics are appropriate: may all be a bit of a challenge. And then 'talking them in' when they do turn up, as there's no beacon for them to follow. Whereas holding down 2 buttons on an EPIRB for 2 seconds is much easier. You can safely pass out afterwards in the knowledge that SAR can then use the continuous beacon to find you.

Iridium do text messaging via satellite with their 9555 phone. But at GBP 1200 to buy the phone its not cheap (no NZ prices online, you'd have to call to ask). They do offer pre-pay plans though, so pay for what you use once youve bought the device. Anyone tried one of these? http://www.wrights.co.nz/products/172/15/9555.html

Thanks for the references, it's interesting reading. So I guess the most ideal situation if weight, convenience etc wasn't an issue, which it usually is, would be to have both. I hadn't actually realised the iridium sat-phones could be as light as 266 grams. Combined in a unit with some kind of EPIRB thing, perhaps it could make a really useful addition to an emergency kit if it weren't so expensive. It's a shame they were knocked out of the market by the global development of the cellphone industry, or maybe they'd be far more cost-effective by now.

There was some discussion here about the SPOT Messenger at http://tramper.co.nz/?view=topic&id=282 which is another option. Though it is important to understand the difference between all these devices. I think the EPIRB is designed for simple reliability in a critical emergency situation. Tell me, can an EPIRB be triggered remotely? I always understood that if, say you passed out without pushing the 2 buttons then it was possible for an aircraft flying in the general location to trigger the EPIRB with a radio signal. Am I right or wrong there?

No. EPRIBs cannot currenly be triggered remotely. This has been suggested in many forums online, but is not a current feature. And IMHO is not likely to be. It would require an always-on radio receiver to listen for the 'trigger' signal which would quickly deplete the batteries: a number of days or a couple of weeks, say, even when the unit is not even transmitting.

Thanks. I can put that myth to bed then