Archive for the ‘Personal Locator Beacon’ Category
A rancher who owns over 22,000 acres in Montana used his ACR Sarlink personal locator beacon to alert rescue crews to his location after a fall broke his leg and three ribs. While riding on his ATV far away from his home and surveying his cattle ranch land for washed out or damaged fence, the ATV hit a drainage rut and flipped over unexpectedly and violently breaking a ranchers left leg and three ribs. In too much pain and unable to shift the gears on his ATV, the rancher used his ACR sarlink personal locator beacon to alert rescue crews. The alert was received and his family along with the local sheriffs office arrived in a 4-wheel drive shortly after they were all contacted by the international alert station of his GPS location.
GME is offering it’s popular Accusat Personal Locator Beacon on sale for a short time. The Accusat is one of the pioneer personal locator beacons. GME introduced was the first to introduce the strobe light built into their PLB as well as a unit that floats. AT only 8 ounces, this is one of the lightest personal locator beacons available.
Sarlink Personal Locator Beacon Saves Another Life
Two fisherman in the Pacific Northwest became stranded and adrift at sea when the motor failed on their boat. They did not have a radio on the private vessel and they were several miles out to sea so there was no cell phone coverage. They realised that there might be help sent many hours later when their wives realized they had not returned but by then they could have drifted far from their intended fishin location. The best chance they had for a timely rescue was to activate their ACR Sarlink personal locator beacon. The signal with their exact GPS location was receved and the search and rescue coordination center alerted the Coast Guard who arrived to tow them in two hours after the distress signal was sent.
The new SARLink and AquaLink personal locator beacons from ACR have the option to send a message letting someone know you are “OK”. This is a great advance over the older units that did not have this capability. This “message” service can be used with the new VIEW series of personal locator beacons from ACR. The non-View series have the ability to send a message but it is limited in what can be sent, and how many messages can be sent. The View series can send a massage (you preset on the website) to any cell phone via text and an email address. The people receiving this message can see that you are OK and can also your exact location (latitude and longitude) listed on a map. This is an excellent feature to have when away from an area with no cell phone coverage.
The Goddard Space Flight center has stated that pilots flying over water should have a personal locator beacon in addition to a 406MHz ELT on the aircraft. If the ELT signals the location of the crash site on water, it will not continue to do so submerged and if the occupants are in a raft or floating in the water they could be miles from where tha airplane went down in the water. A personal locator beacon can transmit the same information the emergency locator transmitter can. There are even PLBs that are waterproof and can float in water if droppped.
The GME Accusat, another great personal locator beacon, is on sale until the end of July 2010. This is the first personal locator beacon designed to float without any external “pouch” or aid. The Accusat is light weight and has a built in strobe as well.
The Kannad XS-4 personal locator beacon is on sale until the end of July. One of the cheapest (in price) personal locator beacons just got a little cheaper. The XS-4 is one of the smallest and lightest PLBs available. McMurdo teamed up with Kannad to produce this very small and cheap personal locator beacon so it has the technology of a very good company who has been making PLBs and EPIRBs for a very long time and has good reputation of making high quality products.
The ACR AquaLink personal locator beacon is the cheapest PLB that will float. The AquaLink is the exact same unit as the SARLink (also made by ACR), however, it is just slightly larger (3/16 in thicker) and heavier (0.2 oz) due to the fact that it will float if dropped in water. It incorporates all the latest feature that the SARLink uses as well. 6 year battery, 35 hour run time, and strobe light.
The new personal locator beacons available from ACR are a much cheaper in price and have many more functions than previous models. The older models, no longer made by ACR, had less battery life and functions than the new models and they also had a much higher price. The new ACR SARLink and SARLink View both have 6 year batteries, strobe lights, small size and light weight, and a cheaper price than earlier models. The SARLink View series also has a great function of displaying the current latitude and longitude of the personal locator beacon itself. In addition, it has the capability to send an “OK” message from anywhere on the planet. This is a great function to be able to “check in” from the most remote area’s of the world and let someone know you are safe. This function is enabled without activating the emergency portion of the PLB.
A personal locator beacon saves the life of a fisherman adrift at sea. For two days, a fisherman off the Pacific Northwest coast, was drifting when the engine on his boat failed. Repeated attempts to signal other boats or the Coast Guard via the boat’s radio failed. After trying to get the motor to start and trying to reach rescue services via the radio for two days, the fisherman’s personal locator beacon was activated and soon a helicopter and Coast Guard ship were dispatched. Within an hour and a half the helicopter was on scene and 5 hours later a Coast Guard ship was able to tow the boat to the coast for repair. A personal locator beacon will work anywhere on the face of the planet because it uses a worldwide array of satellites to detect the signal almost instantly. With GPS, the satellites know the exact location of the PLB.