Thread: Remote Travel Emergency Communication

Originally Posted by one_iota

Your post inspired me to find out how EPIRBs work and I came across this:

What is an EPIRB? - Orolia Maritime

Having been the first person in WA to actually trigger a sea rescue by EPIRB, I can vouch they work rather well.
Unfortunately mine was due to a faulty switch design, and as it was lying down on its side in a cupboard with the antenna retracted it took about 6-8 hours to locate.

They are very much the weapon of last resort, but if you are in a vaguely life threatening situation they are super cheap insurance.

Originally Posted by BradC

Having been the first person in WA to actually trigger a sea rescue by EPIRB, I can vouch they work rather well.
Unfortunately mine was due to a faulty switch design, and as it was lying down on its side in a cupboard with the antenna retracted it took about 6-8 hours to locate.

They are very much the weapon of last resort, but if you are in a vaguely life threatening situation they are super cheap insurance.

That's a great anecdote BradC!

I was thinking of mounting mine to the underside of the lid of the cubby box between the front seats....maybe I'll rethink that

GME 600G EPIRB received, registered and mounted in bracket.

The bracket is fixed to the rear of the centre cubby box in the Defender.

DSC06270.jpg

Unlike any of the gadgets I've owned I hope I never get to use it!

Originally Posted by one_iota

That's a great anecdote BradC!

It's actually a bit longer than that.

Picture 5 17 year olds on Dads boat moored in a remote bay on Rottnest Island. There was pretty severe weather and the boat had been rolling all night. At about 11pm the pin in the EPIRB switch worked loose and it went off. Was picked up by an Aircraft and relayed to Canberra who commenced a search and rescue operation. Queue the deployment of the S&R Heli, 2 Marine and Harbours vessels, a Water Police boat and Naval patrol vessel.

Many men pulled from their warm beds to fight fierce weather looking for the vessel in distress. As light was breaking, and after some 6 hours of full-blown search, the storm had whipped up and one of the Marine and Harbours vessels headed into the bay for a bit of quick respite. Imagine their surprise as they headed down the channel to find the signal strength increasing. They summoned the second vessel to assist and headed into the bay. Progressively waking up every boat between us and the channel with a shout of "Hey mate, have you got an EPIRB on board" and being met with lots of grumpy "NO!" responses, they headed toward the beach. It was 1992 and while we'd had an EPIRB for years, they were expensive and not very common.

I'm pretty hard to get up in the morning, so the call of "Brad there's a cop on the backboard calling for you" was met with "**** off and go back to sleep". "No, have a look", so I did and got a "Hey mate have you got an EPIRB on board", to which I turned white and instructed one of the boys to get it out and hand it to the cop. They pulled the antenna up, did a lap of the boat in theirs while pointing the RDF at it and promptly snapped it in half, tearing the batteries out.

A fairly tense conversation followed where a boat load of very tired and wet police and volunteers interviewed the 17 year old with his mates on dads boat, and they left me with both pieces of the EPIRB and probably went home for a hot breakfast.

A quick rad-phone call to dad to indicate we were ok, but something had happened and we were coming home early and off we went.

My old man had a chat to the water police, who were very nice about the whole thing and he must have mentioned it to one of his dodgy mates (who was *very* senior in WAPOL), as 2 weeks later a nice letter arrived from a Senior Sargent R.McDonald, with a bill of costs for the search and rescue. So the hilarity continued.

I donated the EPRIB to the Water Police in WA and GME immediately revised their switch design such that it couldn't rattle loose with dumb luck in bad weather.

Ever since, I still hear "Here comes EPIRB" as I drive into the bay, although the oldies involved are slowly moving on (in both senses of the word).

So yeah, a bit of an anecdote.

Originally Posted by BradC

It's actually a bit longer than that......So yeah, a bit of an anecdote.

LOL it could only happen in real life...thanks for the chuckle!

Yeah good story.

One would have thought that GME would have tested their prototype to exhaustion & for every which way before releasing it for general consumption?

What could they have slugged you for that little outing?

Why did you go for an EPIRP which are primarily for use in boats, ships and aircraft - most go for a Personal Locator Beacon (PL which really does the same thing but is normally smaller and suitable to also carry when you go walkabout.

Now your EBIRB will contact authorities if you have a life or death scenario but there is no two way communication function. I know you did mention spot and may have missed further discussion but what do you intend to us to contact whoever in non life threatening situations. UHF and mobile phones have their place but are not much good in totally remote areas - you mentioned spot but I would consider a sat phone - costs vary and require careful research to minimise costs - spot also has a bit of a cost.

Garry

Originally Posted by 101RRS

Why did you go for an EPIRP which are primarily for use in boats, ships and aircraft - most go for a Personal Locator Beacon (PL which really does the same thing but is normally smaller and suitable to also carry when you go walkabout.

Now your EBIRB will contact authorities if you have a life or death scenario but there is no two way communication function. I know you did mention spot and may have missed further discussion but what do you intend to us to contact whoever in non life threatening situations. UHF and mobile phones have their place but are not much good in totally remote areas - you mentioned spot but I would consider a sat phone - costs vary and require careful research to minimise costs - spot also has a bit of a cost.

Garry

Well raised points Gary.

The EPIRB travels with the craft/vehicle, the details of which are included in the registration of the beacon. The use of a EPIRB for use terrestrially in 4wds is accepted and catered for. I'm not likely to be straying far from the vehicle so portability is not an issue. The local two way communication is the UHF in the car and a hand held for "strayers".

We are also getting the Spot. There are instances where a non-life threatening emergency could arise so the Spot can cover that in addition to letting others know where you are and that all is well. My partner likes to go walk-about so on the occasion that she goes on a trek she can take the spot with her. The Spot comes with a cost but if a monthly plan is used it is less than a Satellite Phone given our likely useage.

I guess the other thing is that relying on one bit of gear to do everything is not great when that fails. We have redundancy. A Sat Phone on top of that is great but I hope we have the "travel insurance" covered.