Article by Pat Schrawder
MORE AND MORE WAYS
TO BE FOUND
As GPS technology advances and units become smaller and smaller, the public is benefiting by having a large variety of choices of safety equipment and means of being found if you are lost at sea or on land.
The EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) was the first entry into the market but more recently the PLB (Personal Locator Beacon) has taken the industry lead. At first, it was their lower price, but competition has driven the market to develop more and more features in these smaller, less expensive units. Let’s take a closer look at two of them.
ACR, a leader in emergency location for land and sea has introduced their latest PLB, the ResQlink™. The 4.6 oz., 3.9-inch handheld unit sports three levels of signal technology - 66 channel GPS positioning, 406 MHz emergency signal and a 121.5 MHz emergency signal plus a built-in strobe light that is advertised to last approximately 30 hours. It retails for $395 and is simple to operate. You just raise the antenna and press one button. It also has the ability to perform a self test and GPS live tests. The battery should be replaced every six years.
It is important to note that most of today’s EPIRB and/or PLB units have self-test capability, but some are limited. The test generally consists of pressing the test button momentarily and getting a short strobe light and/or audible tone that assures you the battery is okay and the unit appears to be functioning properly. Units with a built-in GPS have additional test capabilities. They are programmed to be able to send a short live burst signal that ground stations are programmed to ignore but which test your unit to check its circuitry for assurance that the internal circuits are operating properly and that it “should” be able to reach the satellite and Coast Guard ground stations.
The ResQLink and some others have taken that one step further with a confirmation signal that you will receive. In other words, you can sign up to a service that allows you to transmit a live signal from your PLB (and/or other compatible EPIRB) that is the same signal the Coast Guard satellite would receive if you were in a real emergency. Normal Cospas-Sarsat Ground Stations ignore self-test messages, but a network called SafeLife Systems has ground receiving stations that have been specially adapted to receive these messages. You, in turn, get confirmation of whether or not, your beacon would be detected by the satellites used by the International Search and Rescue Network. In addition, you will be provided with the encoded beacon location information (15 HEX ID, Country Code, Beacon Type and Programmed Identity) for your verification / records.
By registering your PLB and signing up to the 406Link.com service provided by ACR for a fee of $39.95/year, you can instruct your PLB to send a text message to a cell phone and/or email address and giving you the details that your signal, including your GPS location was received, verify your correct information and signal that you are OK. That confirmation message can be sent to more than one recipient.
You are restricted in how many of these tests can be performed. That is a matter of reserving battery power for a real emergency. So you would typically test this unit before leaving the dock. On special occasions, you might use it to verify arrival at a final destination, but it is designed for emergency location and not as a tracking device.
There is, however, another unit that is designed for tracking. It is called “Spot” and we will talk about it more in next week’s column. We will also compare the two so you can decide which, if any, is right for you.
Pat and her husband, Larry are owners of L&L Marine Electronics on Golf Course Road in West Ocean City, MD.
