Youll have to pardon my coarse language below, but this issue really grinds my gears. There are a number of very clear hardware limitations that make these applications complete and utter horse shit. For one, your phone does not have a correct antenna configuration on any wireless frequency to generate a directional signal. Sure, you can generate a rough correlation between signal strength and distance, but without the ability to infer a direction of search there is absolutely no way to execute an effective coarse search pattern. A few of these developers post videos of themselves honing in from 50 meters to a burial site, a fabulously easy task when you already know where your target is buried. For two, each of the frequency ranges available on a phone are severely attenuated by snow and other solid debris. This means that you may be able to detect some signal, or send out a cellular signal, under ideal circumstances theres a distinctly non-zero chance that you may end up buried in an orientation in which you can not effectively broadcast a signal. For three, the underlying premise of several of these applications, that immediately notifying an external rescue service to your location, is entirely worthless. In a real burial scenario you do not have time to wait for rescue. You have ten minutes, tops, for companion rescue. Unless ski patrol is literally following you down the hill, telling someone where you are isnt going to do a damned thing, theyll just find a cold body. Frankly, Im disappointed in the response of the avalanche safety community to these charlatans. The vast majority of people, especially folks coming from the slack country scene, do not have formal avalanche education and have a vague (at best) understanding of how beacons work. Allowing applications like these, which are effectively no more than totemic protection from harm, to achieve any level of publicity muddles the water for people who need clear guidance on how to effectively manage risk in the backcountry. People who unknowingly rely on these in a rescue scenario will die. If you do not understand any part of what Ive outlined above, please call me. We will drink beer and talk about beacons until all is clear. No joke, this is important business and I will do everything I can to help you understand how and why beacons work. If I see this application on any phone, anywhere in the backcountry, I will happily seize it and dash it against the rocks.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 19:12:29 +0000
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