John Winters wrote --- Jack wrote about one person Navy life rafts but those did not seem to be among the rafts tested by The Aviation Consumer in 1994. Jack, are those test results on the web or do I have to do the snail mail begging thing? It sounds like the Navy's rafts were better designed than the FAA approved rafts. For reasons that are more easily explained if you are closely involved with (a) the military or (b) the federal government, 1985 and 1986 were banner years for studies by the Navy and Coast Guard on safety issues. Kinda dry before and after, but, in those two years, somebody spent some money! But the redeeming factor is that designs of safety equipment don't change much, either, so the data is (unfortunately, in some senses) pretty good. E.g., the current LRU-16 one-person life raft which the Navy uses is still the same design as the ones used prior to the 1985-86 reports; it gains its stability by virtue of its very low center of gravity --- essentially the survivor's body is mostly at or below the waterline in these things, and they're pretty hard to flip. The data is not on a web site, to my knowledge, John, but I have a spare hard copy I can mail to you if you send me an address off-net. And, y'know, I've been active on this list for only a couple of weeks, but I was wondering --- with all the talk about rafts and flotation and such, wouldn't it make sense to equip kayaks with pontoons or sponsons or something like that to make them self-survival vehicles. Y'all ever think about that before? Any discussions at an earlier time? Joq *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Mar 09 1998 - 05:40:08 PST
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