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Emergency SOS via satellite

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Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#361

Post by MarkMarine »

ghaff wrote: post #320
MarkMarine wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wrong, it’s never wrong to call for help if you need help. Call early before you’re hypothermic, dehydrated and your cell battery is dead. A lot of my buddies rescues are older people who just got a little lost, or slipped down a steep embankment and can’t get back up. The worst ones are when that happens, but it’s been 3 days and the chances they find a live person are more slim. The SAR people vastly prefer fin…

Yeah, it doesn't take much. People should be in better shape with smartphones in their pockets but I wonder how many even think about the compass or have downloaded maps if they aren't in cellphone coverage. And it's not like the commercial map providers are all that good with mapping trails. Absent some combination of map and compass--in some form--it's super-easy to get totally disoriented absent trail and landmark…

From what I've been told, there are a ton of incidents of just 50-70 year olds that are out for a daily walk and a couple things go wrong. The service in the hills around here is pretty poor, so it's not hard for me to imagine that this was a regular walk, you take a pint of water and a sweater and that's it.

I own a PLB that I use for safety when spearfishing from a kayak in Northern CA, but I don't bother throwing it in my pocket if I'm just walking the dog in the woods for a couple minutes. I can see this being a big help.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#362

Post by kenhwang »

ingalls wrote: post #201
COGlory wrote: post #123

I was just on the ground coordinating with 4 friends that got buried in 5+ foot of unexpected snow in the mountains (forecast said 1"-2" when they went up) for the rifle opener in Montana. I wound up getting sick so I stayed home (hilariously I was the only one who got an elk) but I sent them up with my InReach. All I can say is THANK GOD that I did, because it turned into over a week long effort to get them out. Two…

First off, super glad to hear your friends are out of the field safe. Want to address one point however: "The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive" In my experience on multiple SAR teams (Search and Rescue), this is almost never the case in North America. Search and Rescue is one of the few services that is almost uniformly free [1]. Thousands and thousands of volunteer hours every year keep it that way.…

As someone with a bunch of idiotic friends that always find themselves needing SAR in North America. The rule of thumb within the group that has generally held true is: if you're on federal lands it's fully free, but if you're in resort, city, or state jurisdiction they'll absolutely try to claw back the costs.

The SAR might be technically "free", but they'll categorize as many things under "medical emergency" as possible and throw the book of fines at you.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#364

Post by MarkMarine »

manacit wrote: post #156
jmbwell wrote: post #120

Set backcountry search and rescue aside for a second. Seems to me this is for ordinary people doing ordinary things outside cell range, and finding they need help. A family member has a heart attack. A collision with a moose. Who knows what. Less “should’ve brought water and a jacket” and more “we’ve been on route 9 for two hours, a moment ago everything was fine, now he’s not breathing, we have no bars, and we have…

This is definitely not an extremely serious backcountry device, but for someone (like me) that is a casual hiker and skier, it was the primary reason I bought an iPhone 14 Pro. It's very easy in the US West to get out of cell service very quickly - at that point, even just throwing an ankle or tripping can put you at the mercy of your hiking companion or random strangers on the trail. If you're going somewhere less t…

I own a PLB, and I don't bring it on every hike with the dog or walk in the woods. I will always have my iPhone though, I think this feature is amazing for the broad coverage and you have it on your iPhone 14 (and later) by default, attempt to call 911 and if you don't have service it's going to walk you through it. I've loaned my PLB to family members, and there was a lengthy instruction period about how to use it. This comes with none of that baggage, it's easy to use and you already have it in your pocket.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#365

Post by c0nsumer »

subsubzero wrote: post #326
jms703 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the Inreach devices can make calls.

you are correct, inReach devices can text by themselves(with no cell signal) and can be paired with a cell phone to make calls(I have the 66i), but not make calls by themselves. https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-6E5DFD2E-EEE4-4...

Are you sure of that? I can find no info nor claims of inReach devices doing anything voice-wise, even when paired with a phone.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#366

Post by lou1306 »

bookofjoe wrote: post #363

I think Garmin's VERY afraid of this camel's nose under its heretofore exclusive tent.

Uh, care to elaborate? I thought Garmin specialized in GPS and similar "passive" satellite-based tech, not actual comms?

Edit: nvm, just googled and found out about the Inreach thing.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#367

Post by portyllo »

brookst wrote: post #162
portyllo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A MHz-POP is just bandwidth times population covered by the Geographic Service Area (i.e., where the company is licensed to operate). For example, in the US, they would have 11.5 MHz x 330 M = 3.79 Billion MHz-POP.

Thank you! Doesn't that seem like a weird metric? I would think MHz/POP would make more sense. I guess the idea is to assume unlimited and independent channels to everyone as a first order?

MHz-POP makes the most sense in cell networks, where an operator (AT&T, T-Mobile,...) wants to acquire a spectrum license in a particular region of the country. Evaluating the MHz-POP makes sense as the price they are willing to pay varies a lot depending on the population density in that region area. In general, cell networks can reuse spectrum more easily (deploy more towers, add more sectors), and they design their network deployment to hit whatever MHz/customer they are targeting (which mostly depends on the technology 3G/4G/5G).

In sat-networks, well, MHz-POP doesn't matter that much, because, generally, every operator is licensed to operate in the whole country. As you mentioned, what really matters is (a) the bandwidth of their license allocation (e.g., Globalstar is 11.5 MHz), and (b) how efficiently can they reuse spectrum:

* how many beams can they land (# satellite x # beams / satellite)?

* how much freedom do they have to chunk bandwidth and allocate it to individual beams based on demand?

* what type of satellite are they using, bent-pipe or regenerative payload?

* how big are these beams?

* can they allocate resources dynamically or is everything fixed?

* how much power does the satellite have? how big are the terminal antennas? what kind of link-budget can they close?

In the end, the MHz/customer they can achieve depends on the answer to all these questions.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#368

Post by lxgr »

pajko wrote: post #282
dont__panic wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any personal locator beacon recommendations? It's one of those items that I could very much use during bike touring, hiking, and bikepacking... but I've never bought one because it seems like a very large cost for something I won't even test until it is a matter of life and death. Out of curiosity... is there any way to alert your local emergency department in advance of testing a beacon, so you can verify that it wo…

This is a quite good writeup with some recommendations: https://www.greenbelly.co/pages/best-personal-locator-beacon... And answers your question: "Each device has a test mode that will communicate with the SARSAT satellite network without sending an alert."

> Each device has a test mode that will communicate with the SARSAT satellite network without sending an alert.

That explanation is factually incorrect, then. There currently is no "test" flag, nor is there the required infrastructure to check if your test alert went through:

https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/emergency_beacon-testing/

So this "self-test" feature can't be communicating with actual satellites. No idea what it actually does, but it's definitely not an end-to-end test.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#370

Post by [deleted] »

DMell wrote: post #341
ghaff wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many, the answer will be that they're buying an iPhone in any case so why buy an additional several hundred dollar device.

Several hundred? It is less than $200 which is cheaper than upgrading to the iPhone 15k - that's all I'm saying. In no world is the device more expensive than an iPhone.

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