doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT: Personal Emergency Locator Transmitter

I spent a week 10 miles off the coast of Belize on a fishing trip a dozen years ago. We stayed in a small fishing lodge (huts on stilts) on a small unnamed Cay with no one else for miles around. I made sure I had the satellite phone with me at all times. Years ago a shrimper friend took his boat about 40 miles off the Georgia coast to fish for snapper and grouper. The boat started sinking and all he had was a CB radio. Ionospheric conditions caused the normal line of sight communication to "skip" to Kansas where a trucker picked up his emergency broadcast. The trucker made a long distance call to Coast Guard Station Tybee which dispatched a helicopter to rescue the two men. Blind luck. An EPIRB would have lessened the suspense. SPOT wasn't around then. Both EPIRB and SPOT utilize satellites. I believe EPIRB uses both US and Russian satellites. Either is better than nothing, but do a google search for Spot v. Epirb before making the choice.

Having spent a long time in the Coast Guard before EPIRBS I can tell you finding somebody is critical to saving them. Time is a major factor live or die. At extended distance time searching is often limited by the Helo's range. You might remember the Replica Bounty sinking. They were at the extreme range of CG Helicopters, able to fly direct to the sinking vessel following a good EPIRB signal.

I can't tell you if Marine intended EPIRBS are responded to by the Coast Guard when activated on land. Or if somebody else monitors the signals.

Boats

I only saw people wanting one for hunting basically in their own back yard....

No one doubts the need in the Arctic or some foreign country.

I hunt an area in a river swamp that is about 10 miles from the nearest house. I was woodcock hunting 3 years ago alone and with my older dog. I had gone out in a cane thicket about a half acre in size, 200 yards from my truck. I had put the keys in my shirt and zipped it up or so I thought. When I got back to the truck, I couldn't find the keys. My vertically slit pocket was open. I went back to the thicket and looked around for the keys. Nada. I was about to walk out at dusk and decided to go back out and look again. I found them in the middle of the patch. They fell out when I was moving through the cane. Wish I could say it was when I bent over to pick up a bird. I have considered buying a small handheld single-side band radio. I am a licensed amateur radio operator (ham). There are relays that pick up weak signals on these handheld radios and relay them. My key loss wouldn't justify an epirb use, but the handheld could've contacted home to bring keys. Haven't moved on the hand held radio, but zip tied an extra key to the frame of the truck. Magnetic boxes are useless on bumpy roads. I also make sure the pocket is zipped.

Per King Brown, Last Dollar, Arctic, Gil and my shooting student Joe Wood I ordered the SPOT unit from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/SPOT-Satellite-GP...PS17DV344AZQ1CK

The Amazon page I linked to has hundreds of reviews on the SPOT.

Thanks!

Best,

Mike

Good choice!

Good choice Mike. You being much older than I, anything could happen.

A chubby old guy like you, if chasing an English Pointer like Skyliner across the California desert, is likely to suffer from a heart attack. Might use your avionics expertise to connect the defibrillator/pacemaker to your SPOT.