Why doesn't someone market a helium balloon emergency signal?

Factual Questions
21

The thread may be a zombie, but it brings up a question I first considered 20 years ago when I got my first boat.

For safety, I wanted to have some method of contacting someone in an emergency, and I preferred calling a friend than the Coast Guard if it wasn’t a dire emergency.

I considered getting walkie-talkies, ham radio transceivers, cellphones, and emergency beacons.

Walkie-talkies: limited range, only work with others who know the frequency or have the other half of a pair.

Ham radio – limited contact possibilities, and none of my local friends were hams.

Emergency beacons – quite expensive at the time, and all they did was send a signal that could be located. You couldn’t communicate about the problem to just anyone.

Cellphones – expensive at the time, but the best choice. The widest range of possibilities, contacts and range, and they could be used for non-emergency, non-water situations. That’s what I went for, and it worked well (I never had a real emergency, but I made calls from obscure islands for business purposes. “Guess where I’m calling from?”)

22

marine band radios are used on larger watercraft on populated waterways. other boaters will respond and you don’t need to know them in advance.

23

There are 17 US Pat. on signal ballons. some are good some are theories. I’ve tried and it’s pretty difficult. Duration of float time for the size of canister
is the hardest, cost is second.

17" ballon would take about 95cc of helium cost alone is 20.00 bucks wholesale, strikers are another 20.00 bucks, plus 1.00 for baloon, line container.
This would give about 8 hours of signal. Add 40% mark up and you have. $7.00 per hour. You can shoot alot of flares in 8 hours for that money. The electronic GPS side is even cheaper.