Satellite SOS (SPOT or InReach) use experience?

[windlion]

Yeah. I'd generally consider lighting my PLB only if I or a member of my party were unable to travel. I was close to that point with a sprained knee, but decided that I could hobble out with an Ace bandage on it and painkillers in me. I was using a cane for a couple months afterward. The best rescue is self rescue.

"Shelter in place" is marvelous advice for eleven-year-old boy scouts, who are likely to be missed within the hour and be at most a few hundred yards from where they were last seen. It's marvelous advice for victims of traffic accidents - who are, of course right on the road - or plane crashes or shipwrecks, where a search will be initiated immediately. It's decent advice if you have a trustworthy signalling method and are incapacitated. But many people are indoctrinated with "stay put and wait for rescue" as children and never get beyond that to ideas like 'downhill goes to a stream, downstream goes to a town." That's practically guaranteed in the Eastern US, and here in the East, you're really unlikely to get cliffed out - at least any worse than having to circle a ledge looking for a break.

That frozen early indoctrination is how we get stories like Geraldine Largay or David Boomhower - staying put and waiting for rescue when nobody knew where they were.

I happen to think that all solo hikers should have at least been on, and ideally led, a few bushwhacks, to be confident in navigation skills. That way, losing a trail becomes, "oh, this hike has unexpectedly become a whack" rather than "oh $#!+, what do I do now?" And when you're solo, it's many times more important to make sure that you're adequately equipped - clothing and shelter for record-worst weather where you're going, for instance. "Gear to survive, not just to arrive."

And THEN you back it all up with a real PLB, and fire making tools, and a whistle, and at least one piece of brightly coloured clothing - because if it all goes pear-shaped, you need to be seen and heard.

Agreed on all points. What do you think about the usefulness of the two way comms provided by the InReach oover a straightforward PLB as a emergenvy/survival tool?


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[Another Kevin]

Agreed on all points. What do you think about the usefulness of the two way comms provided by the InReach oover a straightforward PLB as a emergenvy/survival tool?

My opinion hasn't changed much since https://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/sho...47#post1318047

I tend to figure that a situation (unable to travel) where I would have to light the PLB is a situation where I'm very likely to be dead before they get there.

But if I can make one last act to keep the searchers safer (search is by far the most dangerous and expensive part of search and rescue), it's probably worth the quarter pound for the beacon. And in that case, I'd rather have five watts of UHF, plus a scream on the VHF distress frequency (121.5), plus a visual beacon, rather than a few hundred milliwatts in S band.