Instead of red parachute flares

[William_H]

Is that strictly adhered to by folks sailing to Rottnest for the day?

Yes it is adhered to. The department inspectors roam around boat ramps and harbour entrances asking to see your safety gear. They do however tend to focus on the small trailable run about mobos. Our club require for our once per year Rottnest escorted race that we provide the registration number of EPIRB. So not so easy to just borrow one. Here is a matrix on safety gear mandatory requirements. I confess I just stick to river sailing these days. ol'will https://www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/marine/MAC_IS_RequiredSafetyEquipmentMatrix.pdf

 

[laika]

Here is a matrix on safety gear mandatory requirements.

I found that after my previous post. To British eyes it seems a bit odd that you'd need an EPIRB for 2 miles from the mainland shore but not need flares or a VHF but of course it does make sense when you consider that most of the australian coastline lacks people to see a flare or receive a VHF transmission (freemantle being an obvious exception....)

 

[ip485]

some LEDs are invisible to night vision goggles

Interesting. Do you know, or does anyone, what causes an LED to be invisible to night vision goggles? My electronic flares certainly arent invisible assuming that SandR night vision goggles use the same technology as FLIR.

 

[boomerangben]

Interesting. Do you know, or does anyone, what causes an LED to be invisible to night vision goggles? My electronic flares certainly arent invisible assuming that SandR night vision goggles use the same technology as FLIR.

They use different technology. I’m not saying e flares cannot be seen by FLIR or NVG- I don’t know. I presume these things have been tested but it might be worth checking with the manufacturer to see if they are effective with current vision enhancing technology. I hope they are!

 

[maby]

Interesting. Do you know, or does anyone, what causes an LED to be invisible to night vision goggles? My electronic flares certainly arent invisible assuming that SandR night vision goggles use the same technology as FLIR.

There are two types of night vision devices - image intensifiers and infra-red viewers. LED and optical laser devices will emit very little infra-red and will be close to invisible on an infra-red night vision device. They will show up on an image intensifier which is really just a video camera with a lot of amplification before the viewing screen....

 

[Blue Sunray]

Interesting. Do you know, or does anyone, what causes an LED to be invisible to night vision goggles?

Wavelength - many (probably still most) LEDs are monochromatic. Night Vision Gear (not just goggles) amplifies some wavelengths of the EM spectrum better than others so if your LED falls outside the range of the particular system in use it will not be seen on the NVG (even if it is visible to the naked eye in, for instance, the case of Thermal Imaging).

As a sightly esoteric example pilots' NVG used by some support helicopters will clearly see some signalling devices that are invisible to an Apache crew using their systems.

My electronic flares certainly arent invisible assuming that SandR night vision goggles use the same technology as FLIR.

It is not helpful that FLIR can either stand for the company or at type of imaging system (Forward Looking Infra-Red). FLIR (the manufacturer) sell various types of vision systems which use a wide range of technologies. Unless you are in the military, RAF or possibly emergency services I doubt that you have experience of using (strictly defined) FLIR (the technology) as IIRC it is covered by ITAR.

 

[ip485]

" It is not helpful that FLIR can either stand for the company or at type of imaging system (Forward Looking Infra-Red). FLIR (the manufacturer) sell various types of vision systems which use a wide range of technologies. Unless you are in the military, RAF or possibly emergency services I doubt that you have experience of using (strictly defined) FLIR (the technology) as IIRC it is covered by ITAR. "

https://www.flir.co.uk/products/m324cs/

 

[Blue Sunray]

" It is not helpful that FLIR can either stand for the company or at type of imaging system (Forward Looking Infra-Red). FLIR (the manufacturer) sell various types of vision systems which use a wide range of technologies. Unless you are in the military, RAF or possibly emergency services I doubt that you have experience of using (strictly defined) FLIR (the technology) as IIRC it is covered by ITAR. "

https://www.flir.co.uk/products/m324cs/

From the specs that appears to be a combined EO/IR sensor. The EO (basically video) will pick up LEDs that the TI(IR) sensor will not, aircraft fitted with what what often appears to be a ball with cameras in it will probably have similar capabilities, goggles will not.