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Once again, this incident needs to be a serious wakeup call for wingsuit pilots to start regarding personal locator beacons (PLBs) as equally important to their jump as their rig and their wingsuit. PERIOD.

The wingsuit BASE community simply must stop looking at PLBs as optional because the cost of not wearing them is unjustifiably high not just for the friends and family of the missing but of the rescue teams faced with the near impossibility of finding a downed wingsuiter along so many of the routes.

The dramatically shrinking cost and size of various PLBs, coupled with the increasing numbers of wingsuiters overflying ever more rugged and remote terrain, means there is no longer any moral or ethical excuse to NOT wear a PLB.

This "conversion" took many years to occur in the backcountry community with regard to avalanches, but now almost every backcountry skier/snowshoer/snowmobiler has one, and they routinely make rescues more likely and body recoveries less difficult. In this case especially, Mr. Greenway's experience and backcountry knowledge were such that he may have survived an initial mishap only to die because no one knew where he was.

No more excuses on this, people. Time to become more responsible backcountry athletes.


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While they (plb) definitely COULD help, the fact remains they could be useless as well, as the reviews state, it takes very little to block the signal

Quote; If he crashes in dense trees or in a canyon and ends up lying on his device it very likely will not work (based on our testing, and many reports from friends and user reviews). They are serious when they say "Give clear view to sky" in the manual of each device. Even a small amount of backpack material or light forest coverage can prevent a successful GPS coordinate lock

The fact that it may not give a good enough signal doesn't mean I think it's a bad idea, I just think all the facts should be put out there. The technology will get better, but when "even light forest coverage" can prevent a successful coordinate lock, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in it

While searching for Ralph they found another guy who had been missing for a while, Shows the nature of this area

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/...ional-park-1.2009770

That was my point. It would be nice if the technology was better than what it is at the moment. Given the nature of a lot of these areas, the chances of getting a good enough signal doesn't seem to be very good. Let alone, what condition the plb would be in, with a high speed impact, which is usually what happens :(

How does one activate it if they are dead?

I jump with a PLB (ResQLink) even on skydives. There have been a couple of cases of people with broken legs dying of exposure after going missing on a regular jump. I also carry it with me in the backcountry, general aviation, etc. I hope the battery dies before I ever have to use it.

There are scenarios where it might not work, you are dead and can't activate it or are in a terrible area for reception. If you don't have one it is guaranteed not to work.

My wife carries hers on the dog trails around our home in Southwest Colorado. Just a few weeks ago she almost had to use it when she came across an old hiker with a broken ankle. After a while someone else came along and they were able to go to an area with cell reception.

It is also possible to send a "test" signal that lets people know you are OK if you go missing. I have used that a few times when running late coming off a 14'er.

Its the old adage, "It's better to have it an not need it than need it and not have it".

This smells of the "AAD debate" that is also never ending.

Big Respect & Best wishes to 'Greeny'
Here's hoping he comes back!!


As for Personal Locator Beacons (PLB)
topic well worth discussing but could
we please not do it mixed in a couple
of Incident threads about our friends.

Tom A. would you please move/organize?

that is a good question. Some of them are designed to start automatically given a sudden deceleration. I know when this topic came up a year or two ago my quick web search showed several aircraft emergency locator transmitters (ELTs) that weighed 2-3 pounds and cost $200 - $400. All have "sudden stop" switches.

I think there are also PLBs with timer-based switches that you can activate 10-20 minutes before launch, then turn off manually when you are done; if you don't turn it off, the PLB activates automatically.

There are many options out there for this, and it also would not take much for the wingsuit manufacturers to start adding PLB/ELT pockets in their suits the same way rig manufacturers long ago started including AAD pockets inside reserve containers.

44

That is why the long and highly successful track record of aircraft emergency locator beacons (ELTs) starts with putting them in the tail of the aircraft. The same can be done with wingsuits; either put a PLB/ELT pocket inside the tail deflector or maybe also inside the rig pack tray (that way the parachute itself can protect it because most of the wingsuit fatals are no-pull events).

And you raise a good point about the current level of development and reliability; AADs were pretty sketchy for years until Cypres came up with a fairly bulletproof design.

Finally, I would like to see the battery/signal power specs on these units that can't transmit through light trees. Aircraft ELTs that weigh only a couple of pounds seem to work just fine. I suspect that many of the PLBs you cited are toys more than tools... good for when your kid gets lost in City Park but not exactly up to the conditions of wilderness.

44

+ about 1,000...

...on everything except the last point, with which I partially concur: yes, it does smell like the AAD debate but there is a critical difference; people who die when not using AADs on skydives are easy to find and don't impact the non-jumping community's rescue resource the way a missing wingsuiter does -- and THAT more than any other factor is a reason the terrain flying community needs to get serious about developing a PLB/ELT ethic.

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At $300 I highly doubt these are toys. They even cite one of the testers as a wingsuiter

http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/...cator-Beacon-Reviews

Also agree this should be split to maybe technical forum not here

I've moved the discussion of PLBs to the General Forum.

The problem is, they are toys because IIRC the reviewed systems are all GPS-based, not autonomous radio transmitters designed with the battery power to transmit for 100 hours or so -- and the transmitting power to go through aircraft skin and structures. There are aircraft-rated ELTs out there that weigh 3 pounds and cost half what a Cypres does. They are still a little clunky, though, so I agree with you that the tech is not yet there to make using it an ethical requirement (the way avalanche beacons now are for that backcountry user segment).

But it's close, so now is the time to start figuring out how to handle that.


44

Do they use a long-range radio signal ?

Wouldn't deploying a parachute from full wingsuit flight constitute a sudden stop / deceleration?

I don't really understand this comment. Nylon is basically transparent to radio signals like GPS. Example, we get perfectly good reception with our antenna packed underneath a 65 lb. brick of tightly packed nylon parachute. We've checked signal strength both with the recovery system and with it removed. No significant difference.

Heavy foliage is different. It's full of water which is conductive and can act to shield the GPS receiver.

My plane was old. I can't believe some one hasn't come up with a slick new lithium powered ELT that would be half the size of my old one.

Lee

Most ELT's are set to 10g's for their G-Force switches in airplanes (if memory serves me correctly).

Okay, thanks. So would i be right in thinking the triggering of a electronic beacon in and of itself doesn't initiate a search and rescue (like a security alarm call out or electronic SOS)?

Yes, you would be right. It just starts broadcasting when triggered and broadcasts until someone finds it and turns it off or the batteries die. Searches are usually initiated when the plane is overdue, but there are very rare cases where someone has a radio tuned to that frequency and hears an ELT transmission before the aircraft is reported missing.

Which plays into the canopy opening itself triggering the device... First off, it probably won't because the switches are set for pretty high G-loads -- but even if it did, the chances someone will hear it between activation and when you turn it off after landing are slim and none.

And as Lee says, it's interesting that no super-lightweight lithium battery version seems to be out there yet, but the reason is fairly simple: No need, no demand because the current weights are good enough for small aircraft. Now that there are so many wingsuiters, paragliders, hang gliders, et al, out there, there is in fact a growing need for lightweight systems and if people in those groups start asking for them, they will be built.


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well who's the engineer that wants to start the kickstarter campaign, i mean obviously if the hexo quadcopter and everything else can get crowd sourced funding, and we are probly gonna come up with the money to build or fly some sort of object at burning man, than if the para hangliding wingsuiting backcountry larger community will all benefit from the combined efforts and fill the demand for this type of device, i mean shit they built jebs glasses,

I don't know much about PLB's or if this could be modified to work but it may be useful for other things like discussing private jumping details.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/100711244

http://www.gotenna.com/pages/how-it-works