Flight for Life now can do beacon searches better than you.

[TeleHoar]

Interesting:
From the Summit Daily

Summit County's Flight For Life program held an avalanche beacon training Tuesday on a technology new to the state that will assist in responding to emergencies.

The beacon receiver, which is five times more powerful than a hand-held beacon, hangs approximately four meters below the helicopter and enables a rescue team to receive beacon signals and locate victims within an avalanche area.

The skier or trapped person has to be wearing a beacon in order for the Flight For Life beacon to pick up their signal.

The rescue tool, with only a handful of other such beacons nationwide will serve as a resource statewide in responding to avalanche emergencies.

“We will dispatch to areas in Colorado that have an emergency,” said Kevin Kelble, flight paramedic for Flight for Life. “As the first in Colorado to have this technology, this beacon equipped helicopter is an asset in mountainous areas like Summit County.”

During the training, pilots navigated an area to pinpoint four target beacons “buried” in an area to simulate an avalanche.

“This is an excellent tool to help us improve avalanche rescue operations. With the external beacon we have an immense receiving range and can cover large amounts of terrain quickly, and safely search areas that are still dangerous with secondary avalanches,” Kelble said. “We can also use it statewide and in difficult landing terrain that's tough to access from the ground.”

When it comes to searching for a victim immersed by an avalanche, time is critical. With the beacon receiver equipped helicopter, Flight for Life pilots can pick up a signal from a victim from 150-200 meters.

Having a helicopter search an avalanche path from the air should make for a more efficient search, allowing rescue crews on the ground to zero in on the victims' locations and begin digging for them.

“We can search a much larger area much faster,” Kelble said.

During the simulated search, the Flight for Life helicopter hovered about 30 feet off the ground, sweeping back and forth in a grid pattern across the slide path.

Manuel Genswein, an avalanche beacon expert, came in from Switzerland to conduct the training Tuesday explaining the grid search used to pinpoint avalanche victims.

“It's important to make sure that you get complete coverage,” Weinsen said. “You can't just do a perfect square, but the sensitivity is pretty good on these things.”

He and the rest of the Flight for Life team emphasized that while this new technology improves the resources of avalanche rescue teams, in no way is it a substitute for being properly trained to travel in avalanche terrain, and to know how to use personal avalanche equipment.

The chances of a victim surviving an avalanche if not found after the first 15 minutes begin to decrease steeply, and according to Weinsen, the helicopter arriving on the scene 15-30 minutes after an accident is a “best-case scenario” dependent on location.

“It's an extremely powerful tool that can pick up beacon from very far away,” Kelble said. “Rescue teams can search areas that are still dangerous and we can also cover a huge amount of area very quickly.”

The beacon receiver can also pinpoint the locations of numerous victims by marking the areas where a signal is picked up for ground rescue teams.

The antenna in the beacons transmitter works off an electromagnetic signal transmitted by ground beacons. The receiver picks up the signal while notifying the pilot of the location based on audio alerts.

As the signal strengthens, the audio alert gets louder alerting the pilot of the proximity.

Loren Courtney, a pilot for Flight for Life with experience with the beacon receiver in Salt Lake City, aided in the training Tuesday.

“The training went really well,” he said. “There's a learning curve with using this technology but all of our pilots got in between 5-8 meters of the target beacons.”



Safety in the backcountry
Every year hundreds of people — typically skiers, snowboarders or snowmobilers — get caught in

avalanches.

The goal of all avalanche safety instruction is to help skiers and snowboarders make smart decisions in the backcountry so they can minimize their chances of having to deal with an avalanche and know what to do in the event one occurs.

Even with helicopter beacon receiver technology, a rescue would not be possible unless the victim was equipped with a transmitting hand-held beacon.

“The most important thing anyone can take away with this new addition is that avalanche safety is more important than ever,” Courtney said. “If you're going into the back country you must have all of the right equipment with you — you must have your beacon.”

[stuckathuntermtn]

That's pretty cool. And good writing in that it addresses the fact that it is not a primary saftey tool.

[jgusa]

I only see this saving a life if the heli is on site during the avalanche. By the time it takes to call S&R and scramble the heli following an avalanche, it'll be a body recovery.

[Tye 1on]

I only see this saving a life if the heli is on site during the avalanche. By the time it takes to call S&R and scramble the heli following an avalanche, it'll be a body recovery.

in many or even most cases, yes, but there have also been some survived recoveries after surprisingly long burials.

Still much further off, but there is also research going on using some kind of reflective technology [not sure if it's radar, IR, etc] from heli's to analyze snowpack stability. Hacksaw/salsa/bunion probably know a lotz more about that than I. [/threaddrift]

[MTT]

If you are burried they are not going to find you fast enough to save your life.
Only partners on site have a chance to dig you out before you DIE.

But I see other advantages in the application. Seems it would be very usfull to pinpoint lost or injured skiers in the Back Country (Who are not Burried)

[Name Redacted]

The skier or trapped person has to be wearing a beacon in order for the Flight For Life beacon to pick up their signal.

Well that's bullshit!

[spindrift]

Makes me think a quadrotor swarm approach should be coming soon. Dual mode - beacon and RECCO... Seriously...

[neck beard]

“It's an extremely powerful tool that can pick up beacon from very far away”

Possibly including other people making their way to the site with their beacons still in send? Too much range combined with approaching ski traffic might be a bad thing??

And what MTT said. Sounds like a highly advanced flying avalanche dog. That still gets there too late.

[MTT]

And I have to say, It seems right behind (The Beacon) you should have a Cell phone with GPS. Or a Radio and GPS.

Is there an excuse when you’re lost or hurt in the Back Country to not have GPS

If and when you contact someone the first thing out of your mouth is (My GPS location is)

FYI
I do not have GPS, but I am going to fix that before my skins touch snow. I tour almost exclusively by myself

[nickwm21]

Might be more useful for actual search in rescue when the lost individual has a beacon on....

sent from the future using my mind powers

[Z]

Be cooler if the heli had a giant excavator type crane and once it honed in on your 3m x 3m box it just dug in and displaced all the snow while you go flying off to the side. Killer visual.

[covert]

wake me up when they have a heli that can probe and dig

[1000-oaks]

Hovering a chopper 30 feet off the deck sure seems like a great way to shake loose everything that didn't already slide.

[neck beard]

Hovering a chopper 30 feet off the deck sure seems like a great way to shake loose everything that didn't already slide.

Heli skiing would be a really tricky business if that was the case.

[nickinbc]

Hovering a chopper 30 feet off the deck sure seems like a great way to shake loose everything that didn't already slide.

If the hangfire is so unstable that the windblast from a chopper will set it off there is absolutely no way that I would want to be on the slope digging...

[summit]

“With the external beacon we have an immense receiving range and can cover large amounts of terrain quickly, and safely search areas that are still dangerous with secondary avalanches,” Kelble said. “We can also use it statewide and in difficult landing terrain that's tough to access from the ground."

Kevin's statement is the bottom-line for this tool.

In *THEORY* the FFL Rapid Avalanche Deployment program can be on-site PDQ in terms of North American organized rescue. Remember, we consider a hasty team on site within 90 minutes to be a desirable goal (5-20% survival depending on if you go with the Swiss or Canadian numbers). Flights can cut that down to 15 minutes (beyond ideal) or more realistically 45 minutes (10-33%). Of course, this is dependent on weather, resources, and someone calling 911.

Normally, a snow tech, dog handler, and a dog are deployed by the helicopter. That is what is still going to happen most of the time. There are three scenarios, which Kevin mentions, where the heli beacon could shine. When I say shine, I don't necessarily just mean increasing chances of a live find. I also mean that it can increase rescuer safety and save time/effort.

HUGE SEARCH AREA: If you get a slide 1/4 mile wide or deposition spread over significant vertical, that will take a while for two searchers and a dog. The heli-beacon could allow deployment to the correct area of the slide perhaps saving a lot of searching time, enough to justify the delay in deployment of boots on the ground.

DANGEROUS SEARCH AREA: The biggest application is when there the site is under hangfire or some other secondary exposure. The heli-beacon at least allows a beacon sweep without exposing rescuers to danger, thereby allowing a calculated risk. If a beacon is found, the rescuers can be deployed right on top of the victim thereby minimizing their exposure if the risk is deemed acceptable. This ability is doubly important when there is a question as to whether a party is actually buried such as tracks-in-no-tracks-out.

DIFFICULT-ACCESS SEARCH AREA: If there is a slide where there is a question if there is a burial and it is in an area that is going to take a long time and a lot of effort to access, a helicopter may be able to check the beacon with overflight even though cannot land.

[Toby]

And I have to say, It seems right behind (The Beacon) you should have a Cell phone with GPS. Or a Radio and GPS.

Is there an excuse when you’re lost or hurt in the Back Country to not have GPS

If and when you contact someone the first thing out of your mouth is (My GPS location is)

FYI
I do not have GPS, but I am going to fix that before my skins touch snow. I tour almost exclusively by myself

Looked into the Pieps Vector? GPS integrated into the beacon. Mine's on the way.