PLB

[morfarch]

Hi, I'm looking to buy a personal locator beacon and hoping for advice as to type, what I'm looking for needs to be water activated, fully auto and gps capable. Recent events left me in a situation where I needed both hands to stay afloat and hands to cold to fiddle with small switches and buttons. Cheers

 

[yachtorion]

I'm waiting (and hoping) to be corrected - but I don't believe there are any automatically activated PLBs on the market. The majority of them now have GPS.

Activation is pretty simple, on the McMurdo FastFind I had until recently you just lift the top off and push a single, decent sized button. Cold and gloved hands could do it - if one can be spared for the 30 seconds or so it takes to do this which should be ok in most MOB situations as long as the victim is wearing a good auto lifejacket and not being dragged under by a harness (or has been able to cut themselves free). I suspect the potential for false or unnecessary alarms might be too great.

You can get automatic EPIRBs obviously - but they are fitted in special housings firmly and permanently attached to the boat and activated by hydrostatic sensors that only activate under a few m of water in order to avoid false alarms. They wouldn't help in a solo MOB situation.

I'm sorry to hear of what sounds like a really horrible experience you've had!

 

[morfarch]

Thanks for the input yachtailsa, water activation is the main feature I am hoping for. It's shocking how cold the water is this time of year and just how quickly fingers became numb, just have to keep looking and stay out of the water.
Cheers

 

[prv]

Thanks for the input yachtailsa, water activation is the main feature I am hoping for.

Don't think you'll find one on a 406MHz PLB. I believe they are required by regulation to have manual activation only, to prevent false alarms.

Some are easier to activate than others. The Ocean Signal "PLB 1" is pretty simple - you just slide a thumb or finger under the yellow flap on the front and press a button:

I think there's also an American one that's designed to be set off using your teeth, but I can't remember the name.

Pete

 

[morfarch]

Hi Pete looks as if it's got to be a compromise between what I want and what I can get, I fully understand the need to prevent the accidental setting off of such devices, in my recent situation the desire to stay with the boat needed both hands against the pull of a very strong tide and the extreme cold made my fingers numb in a very short time, this was my main reason for the want of an automatic device something I had never thought about before. Thanks again for the input.
Tony

 

[duncan99210]

According to NOAA (the US agency responsible for registering US base EPRIBs and PLBs), PLBs are only available as manually activated units http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/emerbcns.html . They offer no rationale behind this but it is a pretty definitive statement, so I suspect that you will therefore not be able to find what you're looking for. I understand that there are AIS based distress beacons available that are water activated, so this may be an avenue for you to explore. Failing that when you look at PLBs one of the factors to consider is ease of activation with cold hands.

 

[prv]

I understand that there are AIS based distress beacons available that are water activated

AIS beacons are only really suitable for crewed boats, though (and then they're ideal). If the OP was in the water holding onto the boat and needing to make a distress signal, I surmise that he was alone.

Pete

 

[morfarch]

Hi Guys just to clarify I was alone and it was the intense cold that was my main problem, but then had I suffered a blow to the head and been knocked out once my auto lifejacket deploys then I would have to wait to recover before I could deploy my PLB. It just strikes me how odd it is I can have an auto lifejacket, auto liferaft but not something as vital as an PLB, I will however be buying an PLB just need to try to find the one that is easiest to use, and workout how to hold it above water with the aerial pointed in the right direction while the waves, tide and dithering fingers work against me, easy enough in a dinghy or liferaft.
Tony

 

[prv]

It just strikes me how odd it is I can have an auto lifejacket, auto liferaft but not something as vital as an PLB

But your lifejacket or raft going off when it shouldn't will inconvenience nobody but you.

Part of the reason the original 121.5MHz detection system was retired was because it had a huge false-alarm rate - somewhere above 90%, I believe. This made it more or less useless as an initial call for help, because the SAR authorities would not react unless there was another separate reason to think that people were in trouble - the beacon might then help find where they were. The range of devices that could transmit analogue signals on 121.5 was huge and unregulated, from old army surplus kit to Breitling watches, and there was no way of identifying the transmitter to get them to stop and to be more careful in future.

When COSPAS-SARSAT was being set up with the new 406MHz digital system, they wanted to avoid ending up in the same mess, hence some quite specific regulations and type approval processes controlling how beacons behave. As a result, if you do manually activate your PLB, the Coastguard will send someone to get you, and that seems a fair tradeoff to me.

Pete

 

[morfarch]

Pete thanks for the info I had no idea, must be my knee jerk reaction to last week,, but with today's electronics and science,,
Tony