I raised a question in another thread about whether the “Open Water” scenario happens in the real world, and I subsequently took a look at some diving and boating catalogs to see what kind of emergency equipment is available. You can buy whistles, mirrors, air horns, inflatable “safety sausages,” flags, flares, strobes, EPIRB radio beacons, even waterproof VHF radios, but I never saw something that–at least to my mind–seems simple, cheap and obvious.
Why couldn’t you design a balloon, maybe 18 inches in diameter, with a tiny cartridge of helium and 100 feet of very lightweight line (light fishing line or even something like dental floss would work fine). You could make the balloon our of bright orange or lime-yellow metalized mylar so it would be both visible to the eye and radar-reflective. The mechanical aspects certainly wouldn’t be any more complicated than inflating a life jacket with a CO2 cartridge. You clip one end of the line to you, your raft, a tree branch etc., press a button and the balloon inflates and rises to a level where it could be seen for miles. Maybe the helium would dissipate, but if the balloon lasted just one day that would be a lifesaver. And you could pack spare cartridges.
A device like this would be cheap, small, lightweight, easy to pack and carry, and would be useful for divers, boaters, backpackers and anybody else who ever goes out of cellphone range. You can buy helium balloons in party shops and toy stores. Why doesn’t this emergency device exist?
Because for about $150 you can buy a personal EPIRB the size of a cigarette packet that doesn’t merely make you slightly more visual at short to medium range but rather alerts every overflying aircraft for hundreds of miles around not only that you are in trouble, but exactly where you are.
Thanks, that’s exactly what i was thinking of. But it’s a lot pricier than I expected ($205!), which might be why the boating and diving catalogs haven’t picked it up. And I’m not knocking anything else, I was just wondering about this particular kind of gadget, which I foolishly imagined would only need to cost a few bucks. EPIRBS are great, but there might be times when you just need to be noticed by a boat on the horizon, or by fellow backpackers on the other side of a hill, without raising an alarm with the entire international rescue machinery. And an airplane still has to alert someone on the ground or water to get to you, which would be easier with a balloon fluttering over your head. I still think there’d be a market for a cheaper version of this thing.
[QUOTE=observer1,there might be times when you just need to be noticed by a boat on the horizon, or by fellow backpackers on the other side of a hill, without raising an alarm with the entire international rescue machinery. And an airplane still has to alert someone on the ground or water to get to you, which would be easier with a balloon fluttering over your head. I still think there’d be a market for a cheaper version of this thing.[/QUOTE]
This would be a very bad idea if the same gear was also used as a distress beacon. You either have an emergency or you don’t, and if you don’t you better plan on some other means of communications than your emergency gear.
And whyever would you want to attract the campers in the next valley if there WASN’T an emergency. I wiuld never investigate a balloon out in the woods unless I believed it was an emergency, and I’d be really pissed to find out it wasn’t after going out searching.
Agreed, it’s either an emergency or it’s not. An EPIRB doesn’t even need an aircraft flying over it. If it’s one of the new 406Mhz ones it will be picked up by satelite, it’s signal can also contain your name or other identifying details.
No offense intended, but I would argue that there can be different degrees of emergency for which different levels of assistance would be appropriate. For example, in “Open Water” when the divers first realized that their boat had left them behind, two other boats were in sight, but too far away for them to signal with what they had. If they could have sent up a balloon they would have been rescued in minutes, much faster than by the EPIRB route, and long before it became a matter of life and death. If somebody’s lost alone in the woods, all he might really need is for someone to lead him back to the trail (or kick him all the way back for not having a compass or GPS). That’s hardly a true emergency. But if a blizzard is rolling in, that situation might become an emergency pretty quick.
A balloon would be a local signalling device, like a whistle, mirror, flag or flare, and would be used under the same circumstances, as in “I need a hand from anybody close by,” not necessarily “I’m dying, send in the Marines.”
This is the Coast Guard rule on the use of flares and other distress signals (my emphasis):
“Potential” danger is pretty broad. I’m thinking along the same lines for a balloon. What I don’t understand is why the thing should cost $205.
If you market it as a communication convenience, you could make one up for about $5 from items sold in party stores. If you market it as a lifesaving device, it better have a failure rate of almost zero. It better be so reliable a person can shove it in a pack, pull it out two seasons later and have it work as if it were brand new. It has to work as well at -40degF and +120degF as it does at “room temp” because, let’s face it, few people have life-threatening situations at room temp. The tether better withstand a 60 knot wind and the balloon better be puncture-proof enough to rise through a canopy of conifers. The fact is, most of the people who need this kind of thing are not the kind who properly check and maintain their gear, so you need a very robust device. For $205, you’re paying for about $5 in hardware and a lot of time spent thinking of failure modes and designing to prevent them.
I’ve been involved in a few search and rescue missions. Quite often it will be a small dinghy out in a bay on a beautiful day. There’s nothing wrong except that they have run out of fuel. All they really want is for someone to come out on a boat and top up their fuel tank. However, their minor inconvenience can quite quickly turn into an emergency situation. The correct course of action, no matter how inconvenient it may be for them and us, is to set off their EPIRB and await our assistance.
There are no half messures, either you need assistance and you activate your EPIRB or fire a flare, or you just want to contact someone in which case you buy a small VHF radio. Boats can be contacted on CH16, I imagine there is a similar calling frequency for land operations.
That’s not to say that you have a bad idea, it’s just that the bases are more than adequately covered by the equipment currently available.
You should also consider that most divers or hikers or others would not want to carry around an extra four pounds of equipment (based upon the weight of the kit in Boyo Jim’s link) that would only be really useful in near-emergency situations, according to the OP’s own admission.
EPIRBs and ELTs can weigh around a fourth of the weight of that kit, are of comparable cost, and some include strobe lights or other features to make an individual more easily spotted. Most adventurer-type people try to maximize the utility of what they carry with them: carrying something that weighs a decent amount, and that is not as useful in real emergencies as other technologies, doesn’t seem like a terribly great idea.
Smoke, flares, dyes, and of course electronic transmitters are pretty much more efficient in emergency situations based upon cost, weight, and utility than would be a balloon for which you have to carry a cannister of gas.
Oh, and the price of that balloon thing that was linked to earlier is probably a reflection of the fact that nobody wants to buy it. If there were a market for it, it’d probably be cheaper due to competition among manufacturers.
That’s a brilliant idea and wanted to realise that just for the case of a capsize recovery at sea (e.g. dinghy cruising) where you maight need to be visible in radars without needing to alert the whole world.
Result: it doesn’t work since the lifting power of 1 liter Helium is only 1 grams.
So to lift a standard 500g. inflatable radar reflector (of 160L. volume) I need 500L of He.
That means I need to attach an extra, huge, light weight balloon to the radar reflector. In a stormy weather that won’t stay attached and will drag you a lot.
Good idea but not feasible.
How about a waterproof, floating cellphone? Then you could call 911 or a friend, or whatever. Of course, you’d have to be in range of a cellphone tower, but in my experience, any water within a few miles of land will have excellent cellphone reception, much better than on land.
And such a cellphone would be useful for ordinary calls, and reusable, unlike an emergency device.
Make it a satellite phone. And put on a strobe that can flash on command, or even flash when immersed in water, so if you and it are not together, you have a shot at seeing it floating nearby on the surface.
The OP’s idea is that the balloon itself is the radar reflector, either made of reflective material or coated with something, and not to haul up some separate object to do the same job.
The EPIRB is the best option for the reasons already given by other posters. A metalized object floating in the sky, attached by a line to someone floating in open water is, IMO, a really bad idea. Remember the story about a kite, a string, a key, a storm and Ben Franklin? Shocking!
I was involved with an attempt to set a record for sailing the length of the Sea of Cortez.
The attempt required a mid attempt refueling. Rather than lose time, we had a second boat with the fuel onboard in 5 gallon cans.
The problem was how to rendezvous the two boats. They both had radios, but neither had radar.
I came up with the idea of a helium ballon. So we equipped the fuel boat with a couple of helium balloons and a couple of hundred feet of fishing line.
The result? A dismal failure. A light wind blew the balloons so the were floating only about 20 feet off the surface of the water instead of a hundred or more.
Oh well.