The limited experience here from an exercise in full daylight and good weatherconditions with an airforce rescuehelicopter last year was that the one parachute flare we brought and fired failed and the handheld smokeflare worked. The helicopter crew reported that their FLIR (forward looking infrared) saw the heat from smokeflare clearly at several kilometers distance and this gave about a minute of burningtime to locate the position. Just as important was the use of distinctive colors for clothing, rescuebags or anything else in the water. As they said: We will find you on the beach anyway! They had actually located people due to a bright yellow carrybag from the local supermarket. Cheap and good. But the initial attention must be achieved in another way. Which leaves VHF, strobelights, and possibly cellular phones for some fortunate areas. Not to forget the plan paddlers leave at home with agreed signs of life for the trip. Jens Viggo Moesmand Denmark *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jun 02 2004 - 07:29:58 PDT
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