Saturday 24 December 2011

Auto Revert - Pain or Life Saver?

A short clip from the Glencoe Anatom/BCA park when covered with snow.  A group of well trained guys in the park when I skied in to see how they were doing.  They seemed to have a problem locating one of the sending units which was 2m down.  As there are 8 other beacons buried its quite a challenge if more than 3 are on.  However the problem was apparent after a while as one of the Pulse beacons had auto reverted to send which is its default setting.  The Trackers default is no auto revert unless you press SP mode when switching on.  There is a good reason for this.  The tip itself is often the safest place to be, and the T2 has a big button you can just bump of yourself to get back into transmit.  False signals from auto revert is a major issue at avalanche sites and costs time and lives. Another issue here because of the problem is that some of the group had "marked" either the beacon on auto revert or the buried one so there was some confusion.  The T2's simplicity showed it's worth being so accurate down to cm's.  That's why these beacon parks are so good as real situations occur and have to be sorted out and its a learning experience for all concerned especially me!

2 comments:

  1. People practicing with beacons complained the loudest about the auto-revert interefering with practice sessions. Now modern beacons can allow for the auto-revert to timer to begin after all motion has stopped...potentially saving lives in a hangfire incident. Allowing auto-revert to interfere with a search is an issue which can be solved through educating yourself by reading th owners manual and having a well-led search. Having beacons that are manufactured with NO auto-revert at all by default is a serious threat to peoples safety....

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  2. Are you talking about "Rescue Send" on the pulse as the solution? Trackers do auto revert you just need to press SP mode on switching on to achieve this. Have you ever been on a tip with folk buried and seen the delay because of an auto revert - not training, reality. Please sign your posts as anonymous posting is not constructive.

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