Determining the fine line of activating a PLB

Dogs are reasonably hardy and if incapacitated, might survive long enough for the owner to get out and get back to rescue them. The main concern would be if they recovered and ran around crushing kiwi sternums as they do...

The only purpose of a PLB is to call the cavalry when everything has gone wrong. That would generally be when you are totally prevented to make it back to civilization by yourself. What causes you to be in that position could be a huge number of things and what one person considers the end of the road might be seen by others as barely a pothole. Even those that see the end of the road might see it was only a bump in hindsight but they have to make the decision to activate the beacon based on what they know and believe now not in 6 hours time. What does too tired to walk out mean? It could be "Ive had enough" It could be "Im totalled" It could be "Im puffing a bit" You also have to consider that they may of got delayed somewhere and as a result run out of food so a rest might not of got them going again. Its often hard to look back after the fact and say this was the wrong thing to do as we never have all the facts. What would be wrong would be walk to a hut then push the beacon for a free ride out

there was an incident in recent years where an experienced ramper activated his beacon because he was "going to be out late" he was going to be days late, he knew a search would be activated because he was going to be over a day later than his specified end time and that his contact was going to contact the police, and they would start a search. to greatly reduce the time and effort that would have been put into a SAR operation, he activated his beacon to expedite the search, the helicopter evacuated him as well. if its known you are safe and well and running days late by authorities, then those are not grounds for rescue this happened a few years ago with trampers at an Arthurs pass hut stuck because of a flooded river, who were in radio contact with the outside world, they had food supplies. the police refused to rescue them because there was no threat to their safety. the Press even took up the trampers cause when they were put in touch with the trampers. if you have an injury and you're not sure how serious it is, then you should activate your beacon. if you have a moderate injury that will be excessively aggravated by keeping moving, then you should consider activating your beacon. Injuries are a grey area, something like blistered feet wouldnt normally warrant activating a beacon, extensive blistering that is risking more extensive damage and infection may warrant activating a beacon. Don't be a martyr when it comes to injuries and try not to be too much of a woos either, use common sense, if you have the supplies, rest up for a while then reconsider whether you need to activate your beacon the rescue services would rather you were safe than sorry.

Having formerly worked retail I got to hear some interesting stories from the rep for our PLB distributor about "inappropriate" setting off of units. I think worst was a guy who set his off because he was worried he was going to be late for a meeting in town. Apparently he couldn't understand why the helicopter crew that arrived was not amused to find an able bodied individual waiting for them and would not give him a lift to where his vehicle was parked! As to when to set it off, as far as his company was concerned it was appropriate at any stage when you or someone in your party had suffered a severe/debilitating injury (obviously) or were concerned that you were in a situation where your life may become threatened, even if you were not actually physically injured. eg this situation http://alastairmcdowell.blogspot.co.nz/2013/09/storm-on-makorako.html (Which from reading the blog post I was surprised they didn't get a bit more of a reaming out once rescued)

SAR usually avoid getting judgmental and irate towards rescuees who didnt need rescuing, its not always that simple to make an effective judgment call about whether to hit a beacon and SAR don't want to establish a reputation that might put people off signalling for a rescue because they didnt err enough on the side of caution. there have been occasions when people have clearly lied to SAR about tehir circumstances and SAR won't disagree with the people involved. those guys in that incident above didnt take enough warm clothes with them, it wasnt even sub zero. it should have been possible to stay warm on the move with enough insulated clothing.

The specific regulation which grants a general licence to use a 406MHz PLB is from 2005. Here it is: https://gazette.govt.nz/notice/id/2005-go3930 The specific line that matters is "A general user radio licence is granted for the transmission of radio waves for the purpose of obtaining assistance where safety of life or property is threatened". Note that the same regulation requires that any 406MHz device used to transmit MUST be registered with the RCCNZ, but that regulation is not strongly enforced for practicality reasons. In practice, if you activated it for any random property then I think it'd be frowned on. On the dog thing, it's strictly allowed under the regulation (whether it's "life" or "property", but consider what happens if a helicopter shows up: They'll prioritise getting *you* out safely, and the dog will get a ride if it can be done without major trouble, just as nobody's going to climb down a ravine to get your pack if that's where you dropped it, or even carry it if it can't fit in the aircraft. If you're activating your PLB simply for the dog, whilst you're in no trouble at all, you'll risk some criticism. Anyway, other topics... I'm just guessing which incidents other people are talking about, but here's what I think they are with some references. If Wayne's reference to the PLB when "going to be out late" thing is this one ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/8279907/Rescue-chopper-not-a-taxi-service ), then I'm personally of the opinion that it was an unjustified media beat-up. Someone at the RCCNZ was having a bad day after a helicopter pilot expressed an opinion, and put out a grumpy but irresponsible press release that didn't clearly establish facts. It was then picked up by an aggressive press. Four months later, the RCCNZ cleared the man of any wrongdoing, although it received much less attention. www.odt.co.nz/news/national/260735/tramper-right-activate-beacon (I wrote more about that whole thing at http://www.windy.gen.nz/index.php/archives/2517 ) The Arthurs' Pass thing, at Barker Hut, was crazy in the opposite direction. Three guys were perfectly safe in a hut, with plenty to eat, but stuck behind a river. They had a flight to catch, but were told (via radio) they weren't allowed to order a helicopter because of aircraft restrictions in the park. Then they tried to claim an emergency, despite other parties walking past and even crossing the river after it'd gone down, without significant issues. Police (correctly I'm sure) determined that it wasn't an emergency and so refused to respond as if it was. Meanwhile, however, the radio operator was giving direct interviews to a journalist at The Press, which then produced multiple media writeups that were scathing of DOC and Police for not helping those poor guys. Graeme Kates wrote this up best, dubbing them the Wimpy Media Trio. Although his website's now been rearranged, his write-up can still be read at the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20130206105243/http://www.softrock.co.nz/mg/index.php?page=99

@Waynowski I certainly agree that SAR needs to be careful not to discourage PLB activations and I have no problem with them activating their unit if they felt their lives were in danger. As you point out though they knowingly headed in to bad weather despite being ill equipped to travel in the weather and/or to hole-up when they found they could not continue. That's more what I thought they should have been called out. Not the activating of the beacon but the poor decision making that lead them to that position. As a side-note that website has expanded greatly since I read the article a few years ago and it looks like he's gone on to do a lot more trips and is hopefully all the wiser for the experience!

might have been on this forum, there was a post online somewhere I read from someone claiming to be an ex SAR member. They said they quit SAR because most of the callouts they were getting were from people doing very stupid things, not planning, not preparing, not thinking well at all. He said the ones who knew what they were doing tended to have beacons now and the helicopters were usually picking them up.. personally , i'm a bit of a woos these days when it comes to doing risky trips, I've probably used up my nine lives in the past... that blog was an example how the fast and light mentality can become unstuck. the weather literally immobilised them in the first place due to lack of gear and even their camping gear couldnt reverse their immobility.. theres a lot more people heading out now with minimal or not enough backup gear than there used to be, we'll see more incidents like that. doesnt help when people blog about doing fastest known times over long routes with little more than light running gear and other people want to copy them... without helicopters there would be a hell of a lot of dead people in the mountains, without cell phones and beacons there would be a lot more dead people. I've been rescued by a helicopter with a genuine immobilising injury, I was torn about it, i was very grateful for the ride out. the alternative was days of trying to stagger down a boulder strewn river bed and risk aggravating the injury, or wait days for a SAR team to carry me out and it would have been reliant on fine weather as there was no flood route on the river. but i wasnt happy about having to have to be rescued either. trampers normally pride themselves on their self reliance, we get all sorts of minor injuries and we patch ourselves up and keep going...

A question that I think is relevant, would be good to get an answer to: How do SAR treat the situation of a competent and well equipped person or party that is overdue, is known to have a PLB with them, but it hasn't been activated? Do they take the fact it hasn't been activated to indicate it's likely there's no emergency, they're probably just waiting for a river to go down / weather to clear or do they go anyway? In the case of a solo tramper, if they're overdue and the beacon hasn't been activated, either they're OK or they're dead. (I suppose there are small possibilities of it not functioning or it got dropped of the cliff when getting it out). In the case of a group, if they're overdue and haven't activated their beacon, can it be assumed they must be OK? There is that dilemma of "I'm overdue past my panic date/time, but there's no emergency, should I just keep walking out, or should I assume they've put resources out there looking for me so I should activate the beacon to save them time looking".

they should be treating a panic time the same irrespective of whether you have a beacon or not, its a dangerous road to assume no news is good news. beacons don't have perfect coverage and they can fail to work.