Some Yachtie mates of mine were passing a couple of us in kayaks recently and later mentioned how hard I was to see. I've heard this sort of comment frequently re any kind of kayak, even the brightly colored ones, but ours on that day were both olive drap Kleppers. The yachties did say that my friends boat wasn't too bad because it had a vertical aerial, about 4 feet I think, which was visible. Out to day and occasionally the swell was about 2 meters and the chop about 1 meter and my kayak partners commented again on the problem of visibility. i.e on this occasion it was sometimes hard for one kayak to see the other so heaven knows what it would have been like for neighbouring boats. (Of course we try to stay out of their way). In my navigation class yet more yachties asserted how difficult it was in general to see kayaks and the instructor suggested that running a metallised wine cask liner up a mast would make a good radar reflector. For kayaks this sounds a bit bulky with problems of wind resistance, so I'm wondering is it worth using a radio mast to enhance radar and optical visibility by attaching a colored pennant made of wine cask liner. Does anyone know how big such a pennant would need to be to give a decent radar signal and would the pennant interfere with radio transmission from a VHF radio using the antennae? If it worked this idea might be appropriate for Kleppers, which are unlikely to be rolled. Are there good reasons not to do this? All the best, PeterO. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Aug 15 1999 - 01:22:17 PDT
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