Sorry for the awkward title. This sad thread about a lost camper reminded me of a piece of equipment I keep in my pack—a basic signal mirror. I’ve never had to use it, but always wondered if it would do me any good before someone was actively looking for me.
Say I get a severe hangnail on a trail and need an emergency manicure. No one will notice I’m gone until a week later when I don’t check in. I see a plane or boat in the distance, break out my mirror, and curse up a storm because it’s a moonless night. But the next morning, I see another boat/plane combination and signal the hell out of it. Assuming the pilots aren’t hikers or Morse code buffs, and assuming they notice, will they give it more than a passing bit of attention? Or do I have to wait for a search party to care about signals or a roving Ranger Rick?
It was never mentioned during my pilot training. That being said it’s pretty common for pilots to tell an air traffic controller that they see a forest fire or something similar. If I thought someone was signaling me with a mirror I’m sure I’d at least mention it and give them the location.
Assuming a full-on forest fire is out, the best I could hope for is a regular open fire with a lot of green wood to create smoke. The type of thing you or other pilots would routinely report?
And about the mirror, I’ve also wondered if I could aim it accurately enough–at an airplane moving through the sky–to make some sort of intelligible Morse code S.O.S. If not, you’ll just see some twinkling down in the woods. Is that the type of thing you’d notice/report?
Oh, right, I did my Boy Scout stint and learned how to aim it (which involved lots of blinding of each other). But the thought of hitting an airplane’s window as it flys by always struck me as something of a long shot. Not hitting it once or twice (if it’s facing in the right direction, but being able to hit it with enough regularity to spell something out correctly (… . .-… …-. ).
The light spreads as it leaves the mirror, in exactly the same way that a pinhole camera works. so if you can hit your friend at 50 yards or so, you can flash the airplane at 10,000’…no need to aim for the window.
By the way, the mirrors in question have an optical aiming provision built in. There are a couple of different types, but you don’t have to be able to see where the bright spot is hitting like when you entertain the dog with your watch crystal. The airplane would need to be within 90 degrees or so of the sun’s apparent location. Much more than that and you need a second mirror to artificially move the sun to a favorable angle.
I have tried to send code with one of these, SOS is difficult, and anything beyond that hopeless. It worked best for me to hold the mirror steady with one hand and shutter it with the other, rather than to try to move it on and off target. I suppose with practice you could get good, but I found it easy to get crossed up as to what hand position was “on” and which was “off”.
I was hopeless at reception. A few sailors were (are?) trained to receive Morse blinker messages by eye, but few radio operators (the bulk of Morse fluancy) would be able to. Also, though I regularly run 18 WPM or so on the radio, I pretty much can’t read the – — .-. … . with any fluency. typed out as dots and dashes like that, nor if you said dash-dash etc. It is all in hearing the rhythmic cadence of the letters for me, and I do not make the step of converting that sound into dots and dashes. When I was learning code 30 plus years ago, the advice was specifically NOT to even try to learn or think about dots and dashes, and to try to forget if you got the advice too late. So I’d immediately recognize di-di-di-dah as V if spoken that way (the start of Beethoven’s 5th).
Back to the OP, best thing is just flash the plane on-off-on-off etc. Try to do it slowly and regularly so it doesn’t seem like it might be the odd piece of tin waving in the breeze. If the plane circles or wags it’s wings, then you can try for an SOS.
I don’t see why a pilot wouldn’t report some repeated flashing to air traffic control who could then relay it to the park rangers or whoever. They can get a single flash off a piece of glass or trash but if you flashed and waited a few seconds and flashed again, it’s hard not to realize someone is trying to signal you.
I do see one problem… I don’t know if I trust a pilot to be able to pinpoint the location accurately enough. If it’s a Cessna that can swoop down and circle while pinpointing the location on a map or GPS, great. But if it’s a plane flying at a distance that can’t deviate from it’s path, all bets are off. Being near a landmark would obviously help.
Having spoken to some search and rescue folks, such “twinkling” would be investigated so it could have utility even if you weren’t sending a discreet signaling and just engaged in flashing light at the airplane or boat. Regular patterns are best. The —…—…—…— pattern of an SOS is an example but any regular/non-natural pattern should attract attention.
SAR people also look for flashes of reflected light off the metal of crashed airplanes and such.
Regular pilots will also often report unusual things - around where I fly it’s usually house fires but large traffic pile ups, brush fires, and so forth will typically be reported.
If a pilot thinks there is something serious going on he or she can request a diversion from their planned path if they’re on a formal (instrument) flight plan. On top of that, air traffic control can and does ask pilots if they would divert to a particular location to get a closer look. If diverting isn’t practical then a follow-up aircraft will be sent if there’s reason to believe there is an emergency of some sort.
Training for a PPL does not include any mention of signal mirrors, that I can recall. However, it does briefly cover other kinds of signals that the pilot may use after a forced landing in a remote area. These include some symbols designed to be seen from the air, to communicate basic information to searchers.
So, given that some pilots have received this training (at least in passing) and that some subset of these may actually remember what the symbols mean, you may want to try those.
I am embarrassed to say that if I were flying a small plane and I noticed the flash of an object reflecting the sunlight, it would be very unlikely (at least before reading this thread) that I would think it was a deliberate signal, and hence very unlikely that I would respond appropriately or report it to anyone. You would need to do whatever you could (regular flashes, etc.) to make it clear that it was a deliberate signal.
That’s pretty much the crux of my question. If I were lost in a known wilderness area (e.g. a national park) and was also reported missing/overdue, I’d like to think I’d be able signal the search and rescue team (if I were able-bodied).
But say something happened while hiking in relatively rural downstate New York. There are provisions for lost hunters and the like, but they’re not routinely mobilized and on the lookout (as far as I know). So if I end up with a really really painful hangnail when no one is looking for me, it could be a long time before one of the private pilots flying overhead–to say nothing of commercial airline traffic–a) noticed, b) recognized flashy flashy as a distress signal, c) thought to tell someone, and d) could give an accurate description of where I was. Sounds like I’d better add nail clippers to my emergency kit.
