Organizing beacon practice: How to?

[filthyfrenchbum]

I'm trying to get some students together and organize a big practice session (and hopefully more if it works out) on campus before the season starts.

This would not take place on snow, but either in a forest or on a beach.

What I'm thinking is putting the beacons in ziplock bags and burying them very shallow on the beach and getting everyone to search a few times, with multiple scenarios every time (single or multiple burials, etc). However, I'm wondering if the signal will poke out through the sand at all?

Any ideas about how to make this better? Maybe pairing a beer with every beacon and shotgunning it?

Also, is there an optimal number of people to get together for this?

[LoloB]

If the sand doesn't work you can always bury them under leaves. The beer with a beacon idea is soldid...after the searching is done maybe.

[jfost]

they work fine in tupperware buried at 1-2' in sand, so you should be good to go. Dont do the beer thing, and MAKE SURE you turn all the buried ones on/to 'send' not 'receive' or you will be digging lots of holes looking for beacons!

[Rip'nStick]

leaves are good because they don't look as disturbed as sand. you can prety much tell where a buried tupperware is on the beach,even if you dig fakes.

Lots of traffic cones works but not as good as the two you mentioned.

Don't forget to leave some visual clues... gloves half buried, pole lying around. Visual clues are also key in quick recovery, especially the scenario where the buried don't have beacons or not activated, a scenario you could find yourself in.

Tokens for beer after the exercise would be a better call. This is not really a game.

[hutash]

Why not do "the beer thing"? Might as well make it as realistic as possible. You might want to have people hit the bong a few times as well to make it a real back country experience.

Actually there is an article with some hints in this months Backcountry mag.

[COsingletrack]

The Oct Backcountry magazine has an article and suggestions for dry weather practice situations and searches.

[Platinum Pete]

I've played beacon hide-and-seek with friends at campsites on the way to BC trips. Better with a small group.

[farmer]

let me know when where you are doing this (assumeing that you're in vancouver, bc, not wa) I'm at BCIT, and could always use some practice. good chunk of forest here on campus if you wanted to use Burnaby as a good, central location.

[skibee]

We used to do 12 or more beacon searches amongst buildings for guides training... be careful around any electrical activity... it warps yer signals and messes you up. One of the advantages of this was the realistic size of the search area... a size 2 avi will bury you and can be up to 300m in size... so think big if you have many folks... makes communication difficult (which is realistic). SAve the beers fro afters... no point in training pished up!

[old goat]

The Doug Coombs way--hide beacons in the produce section of the grocery store. Buy beer on the way out.

[Hacksaw]

http://www.telemarktalk.com/phpBBvie...light=nerfball

I wrote this article while I was working for the CAIC. It appered in the CAIC's Beacon newsletter and in The Avalanche Review. I hope you find it interesting and something you'll try.

First and Ten Beacon Practice….
By: Halsted Morris

I’m never surprised at the unusual situations that come up while teaching avalanche safety courses. While teaching avalanche safety courses for the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), one of the many things I always emphasize is that folks need to practice a lot with their avalanche rescue transceivers. Some recent studies have shown that folks don’t practice enough with their transceivers. And thus don’t know how to use their transceiver well enough, to do a timely rescue of their buried companions. Checking on the Internet, you’ll see on many forums that the general public’s attitude is that if they’re using a digital transceiver that they don’t need to practice as much. This is a trend that the professional avalanche community needs to address. The truth is practice builds skills, and no practice means no skills in a clutch situation.

Its happened to me many times as I’m standing there telling folks how they can do their transceiver practice during my presentations. There’s always someone that raises his or her hand. Usually they’re in the back of the class sitting alone, looking like a candidate for an on-line dating website. Their question is usual phrased, “What do you do if you don’t have someone to practice with?” Who knows, maybe this is an obtuse sympathy pick-up method. Maybe I’m just missing something. But, obviously doing solo transceiver practice isn’t very realistic, if you’re the one doing both the hiding and finding.

Backcountry Access (BCA) has set up 30 “Beacon Basins,” around the country. These Beacon Basins, are great learning tools that allow folks to run multiple transceiver practice searches. But, sometimes access to a Beacon Basin might not be as easy, as a student might want. Also, there have been stories of folk’s lining up to use a Beacon Basins around the country on busy weekends. They’re over popularity has been their only limiting drawback. So, coming up with a convenient transceiver practice solution for my solo student has been kicking around in the back of my brain for awhile.

Ideally, it would be great to simply throw a transmitting transceiver over one’s shoulder, in order to hide the “victim” for solo transceiver practice. But, as tough as most transceivers are, its not recommended to be throwing them around. A number of folks still have their older duel frequency transceivers (Ortovox F2, Arva 4000 and Ramer Avalert Duel) or older 457hz analog transceivers (Pieps 457 Ortovox F1) in the back of their equipment closets. The CAIC does not recommend using these older duel frequency transceivers in the field, but they can still be put to good use for transceiver practice. Also, there are a number of used older transceivers for sale out there that student’s can picked up at minimal cost.

But, repeated “hucking” of even these older transceivers, will eventually take a toll on them. I got to thinking that there must be a way to pad a transceiver, in order to take the punishment of “hucking.” The solution to this problem arrived to me one day while shopping at Target. Target and King Soopers sell a small nine-inch Nerf football, for less then $10 in their toys sections. A Nerfball is made of soft foam, suitable for indoor play. The nine-inch Nerf football is ideal for padding an avalanche transceiver. I cut the football in half lengthwise, and then I could easily rip-out enough of the foam from the inside to make a form-fitting pocket for the transceiver to sit in. Then all I needed to do was place the transmitting transceiver inside the pocket and then tape the two half’s back together with cheap first aid tape (several large rubberbands also work). But remember, make sure the transceiver is on transmit and working, before you secure the two half’s back together. Otherwise, you’re in for a long protracted search, for a non-transmitting transceiver.

Lacking a John Elway strength arm for throwing the Nerfball very far, I have found that throwing the Nerfball over my shoulder down a steep hill helps the ball travel further away. I have also found that doing transceiver practice on a forested slope with plenty of undergrowth makes for better (i.e., more complicated) practice. Once you’ve thrown the Nerfball over your shoulder allow it a minute to “pinball” down the slope off trees, roots and rocks, and to finally come to rest. So far, my old Pipes 457 transceiver has survived 50+ “huckings” inside the Nerfball.

Essentially with the Nerfball transmitter you’re doing a transceiver search without the victim’s last seen area. This is usually the most difficult sort of transceiver search for most folks, other then a multiple burial type situation. My thinking is that practicing the most difficult type of searches should improve one’s transceiver skills the most.

Just like an on snow search, you need to first acquire the victim’s transmitting transceivers signal. Since you don’t know the slidepath boundaries in doing a dry land solo transceiver practice, figure your slidepath to be150 feet wide (75 feet to either side of the spot you where standing when you threw the Nerfball). Once you have picked up the victim’s signal, you can then start to use your preferred search method, of either the fluxline/tangent method or the grid method. Once you’re closing in on the victim, you may actual see the Nerfball. This is maybe the only drawback to the Nerfball practice method I see. In that you don’t have an actual burial, to pinpoint on. But, you can complete your search and practice your pinpoint search just above the Nerfball transmitter, while it is visible and sitting on the ground. A camouflage pattern stuff sack might be one way to make the Nerfball less obvious, until you’re almost on top of it.

I have also used the Nerfball transmitter during on snow avalanche courses. Tossing the Nerfball down an untracked snow covered slope the Nerfball tends to sink into the snow. Without the usual foot tracks, it means there’s no "cheating or faking it" in covering the entire search area. Placing the Nerfball in a white plastic trash bag can add to the camouflaging of the hidden transmitter.

The objective here is to get you out and doing a lot of transceiver searches. And if you have a big enough slope, they can get four or five practice searches in before hiking back up the hill to start all over again. So, there’s no reason to forgo doing transceiver practice just because you don’t have a partner or Beacon Basin area handy. The Nerfball transmitter practice method is easy, simple, cheap and a fun way to get in some good transceiver practice. And with two Nerfball transmitters you can quickly become skilled at multiple transceiver searches.

It doesn’t matter what brand of avalanche rescue transceiver you own. But, its more important that you’re super confidant and know how to use your transceiver when the chips are down. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you own, but rather do you really know how to use it. So, get out there and work on your skills this summer. The Nerfball transmitter is one way to improve your skills. I hope you’ll try it out.
_________________

[bio-smear]

and MAKE SURE you turn all the buried ones on/to 'send' not 'receive' or you will be digging lots of holes looking for beacons!

My Barryvox reverts back to transmit after an interval, so that wouldn't really be the ordeal you think it would. Do other brand beacons do that too?

[jfost]

My Barryvox reverts back to transmit after an interval, so that wouldn't really be the ordeal you think it would. Do other brand beacons do that too?

good point, I was thinking of the pieps 457 "practice beacon" or some other similar vintage for training use, but if you bury a newer one, then I guess you're gold!!! Pretty sure the Tracker does this too... Not sure if the DSP reverts, as it has the manual slider switch - I'll RTFM tonight!

In the sand practice I've done, we've had a shovel and rake to hide the burials... it worked pretty well, but I like the leaves idea above. That'd be the way to go this time of year!

[filthyfrenchbum]

Great tips so far, thanks a lot!

I will give that nerf ball method a try sometime.

If any Vancouver mags are interested, this is going down at Wreck beach (hopefully it'll be rainy so the old naked dudes won't be there) this Friday at 4pm.

[Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer]

Nice post - good discussion here with some useful info.