Lost Divers...

[H20doctor]

Well I have been thinking alot about the lost diver girl at whidbey Is. I have also thought everytime a diver is lost ..How come we dont have a device to find them.? I mean if I go snow bording, or snow shoeing, or snowmobiling, Or anything that has to do with an avalanche!!! You wear a Locator Beacon.. This little device throw out a signal if your burried, and people can locate you in the snow....
So why hasnt someone developed and made a diving beacon, A beacon that you wear on your BC, you turn it on before every dive and if you end up missing , the coast guard or who ever can track you and find you. Just like the blaxbox on an airplane, they can find a diver up to 2 to 6 miles away... It cant be that hard to make. ? and it should be made to find lost divers..

[Phineas Gage]

Good question.
Closest thing I've seen is this: http://www.omsdive.com/resq.html

[Sounder]

Well I have been thinking alot about the lost diver girl at whidbey Is. I have also thought everytime a diver is lost ..How come we dont have a device to find them.? I mean if I go snow bording, or snow shoeing, or snowmobiling, Or anything that has to do with an avalanche!!! You wear a Locator Beacon.. This little device throw out a signal if your burried, and people can locate you in the snow....
So why hasnt someone developed and made a diving beacon, A beacon that you wear on your BC, you turn it on before every dive and if you end up missing , the coast guard or who ever can track you and find you. Just like the blaxbox on an airplane, they can find a diver up to 2 to 6 miles away... It cant be that hard to make. ? and it should be made to find lost divers..

Not a bad idea... I fear though that with so many divers in the water, at all times of the day, they'd be chasing strange signals a lot. There has to be a way to ID one individual beacon though - a simple code like they put in pet microchips would work. It might also be nice to set it to "activate" when the unit has been under water, or on, or whatever for more than ___ hours - technical divers might have to set it another way depending on their dive plan, but recreational diving would fall within a small window. It could also have a manual "activate" feature that allows it to to be turned on by a missing diver who is on the surface but has lost the boat.

Not a bad idea at all... my avalanche beacon (and other back-country gear) never leaves me when I'm riding outside of groomed runs.

[airsix]

A beacon to locate divers on the surface would definitely be easy and practical, but radio waves don't travel far underwater.
-Ben

[H20doctor]

I dont think having many divers in the water wearing this device would matter, its when a divers goes missing...as far as being different signal wise it could give out a diffent tone or clicks deepending on how long the unit has been in the water..and also at depths. This would tell the diff, between a rescue diver and the diver missing. As far as signal goes, If they can hear a whale singing and clicking mile and miles away, they should be able to track this diver beacon no problem..

[Sounder]

A beacon to locate divers on the surface would definitely be easy and practical, but radio waves don't travel far underwater.
-Ben

Yeah, I was thinking sound might be better. I like the idea of having the click sequence give depth information too.

[smike]

If I should ever get lost, I don't care if they find me afterwards. I only care while I can care, afterwards I'm fine with being crab food. So it would be of limited use in my opinion, unless someone is monitoring, like your buddy, and the monitoring person has enough information that they can find me before I perish. A snow accident has in some cases hours to locate a victim, for SCUBA, only seconds or minutes. On the other hand, a surface locater would be great for cases where current takes someone out to sea.

S'Mike

[Sounder]

If I should ever get lost, I don't care if they find me afterwards. I only care while I can care, afterwards I'm fine with being crab food. So it would be of limited use in my opinion, unless someone is monitoring, like your buddy, and the monitoring person has enough information that they can find me before I perish. A snow accident has in some cases hours to locate a victim, for SCUBA, only seconds or minutes. On the other hand, a surface locater would be great for cases where current takes someone out to sea.

S'Mike

You're missing the point. We're happy for you to become fish food, we just want your gear.

[spatman]

If I should ever get lost, I don't care if they find me afterwards. I only care while I can care, afterwards I'm fine with being crab food.

it not always about you, dude. it's about the people you leave behind and the resolution they sometimes need. if you're not leaving anyone, or no one give a crap about you, well then, whatever you end up as is fine. but for those of us who have spouses, family and friends, a way to find us if we're lost, whether alive or not, can be very important to them.

[Tom Nic]

If I should ever get lost, I don't care if they find me afterwards. I only care while I can care, afterwards I'm fine with being crab food.

it not always about you, dude. it's about the people you leave behind and the resolution they sometimes need. if you're not leaving anyone, or no one give a crap about you, well then, whatever you end up as is fine. but for those of us who have spouses, family and friends, a way to find us if we're lost, whether alive or not, can be very important to them.

I still want his gear...

[H20doctor]

Ya mike, finding you and finding out why you died...ie, out of air, equipment fail.etc..etc.. Also being able to put your body to rest and morn you is also a good reason to find you for your family, and wife and kids...
What kinda gear you Own..???? LOL

[Sounder]

If I die, I just hope I'm missing long enough for all hell to break-loose on the boards regarding why I died and who stupid I must have been. That'd be great fun.

Then they can find me - there are too many people who want my gear. Course, you little bastards would be calling Mrs. Sounder offering to take care of my gear before they even found me!!

I don't know what she'd do with it, but I'm guessing GD would end up getting first dibs.

[airsix]

Course, you little bastards would be calling Mrs. Sounder offering to take care of my gear...

Or worse. They'd be calling Mrs. Sounder offering to take care of Mrs. Sounder.

When I was a teen in OW class my instructor told me "Plan your dive and follow the plan so you don't have to worry about your friends dating your widow."

-Ben

[spatman]

Course, you little bastards would be calling Mrs. Sounder offering to take care of my gear before they even found me!!

some of us have asked about your gear before we've even lost you...

[Penopolypants]

Course, you little bastards would be calling Mrs. Sounder offering to take care of my gear...

Or worse. They'd be calling Mrs. Sounder offering to take care of Mrs. Sounder.

When I was a teen in OW class my instructor told me "Plan your dive and follow the plan so you don't have to worry about your friends dating your widow."

-Ben

Haha! That is one way of looking at it!

I'm sure Mrs. Sounder would be quite the catch but then you'd also be taking on the Spawn of Sounder.

[Diver_C]

If I die, I just hope I'm missing long enough for all hell to break-loose

Missing, you?!?!?!?! I hear with your light, that's the last thing that'd happen. In fact, perhaps you are seen too much with that light. Just be wary - you shine that thing at me, and I'll shine one right back at ya'....

[spatman]

If I die, I just hope I'm missing long enough for all hell to break-loose

Missing, you?!?!?!?! I hear with your light, that's the last thing that'd happen. In fact, perhaps you are seen too much with that light. Just be wary - you shine that thing at me, and I'll shine one right back at ya'....

sounder's light is probably visible from space, so we'd just use some satellite to find him.

[DiverDown]

When I was a teen in OW class my instructor told me "Plan your dive and follow the plan so you don't have to worry about your friends dating your widow."

-Ben

Excellent point "IMO" think thats the number one mistake most people take for granted. Not following your plan...

[Dusty2]

It should be no problem setting something up. After all they have transmitters they put on whales and porpoise and can even track them by satellite. why not people?

[airsix]

It should be no problem setting something up. After all they have transmitters they put on whales and porpoise and can even track them by satellite. why not people?

Again, the tracking only works at the surface from what I know. No tracking at depth. Something to track lost divers on the surface would be simple, but something to locate a deceased diver on the bottom is going to be much more challenging.

I can tell you from first hand experience that a 5watt 150 MHz transmitter will only punch a signal through about 15ft of fresh water. 5w is a lot of power for a portable transmitter, and 150 MHz is not a very high freqency (lower = better underwater).

Here is a link to an article explaining the problems. It gives examples of calculations and tests done at frequencies as low as 1.8 Mhz, which is very low frequency in terms of radio communications. Note the calculation showing that increasing transmitter power to 100w would still only give you a max range of about 34 meters. No diver is going to carry a 100w transmitter. Also note that these calculations are for fresh water. In salt water the attenuation (signal loss over distance) is much greater.

http://www.qsl.net/vk5br/UwaterComms.htm

-Ben

[Tom Nic]

It should be no problem setting something up. After all they have transmitters they put on whales and porpoise and can even track them by satellite. why not people?

As Airsix mentioned, I beleive it is only surface tracking. They attach something to the whale, it dives with the critter recording time, depth, temps, etc. Then after a time it comes off and pops to the surface and only then the data is read.

Need that underwater GPS!

[Sounder]

I've got it!! We all carry a time-activated 100lbs lift bag strapped to our ass, and if we're underwater for more than 10 hours in a row, it'll automatically inflate and bring the diver to the surface... just be sure you're not hanging on a deco stop when that one-way ticket kicks in!!

[Dmitchell]

Actually,

This wouldn't be all that hard to design maybe even reasonably priced.

All you need to do is use a sonar ping. You could design a device that has wet contacts and is set to either ping a certain pattern or on a delay that the user could set to say 1.5 hours (1hour to dive and 1/2 hour to make sure you're dead) submerged before starting to ping.

The receiver would be a directional sonar that could determine location based on strength of ping.

The power would be in the receiver not the transmitter. So that the transmitter could be smaller.

Dave

[Joshua Smith]

I've got it!! We all carry a time-activated 100lbs lift bag strapped to our ass, and if we're underwater for more than 10 hours in a row, it'll automatically inflate and bring the diver to the surface... just be sure you're not hanging on a deco stop when that one-way ticket kicks in!!

Yeah. Sounds like a good idea. I'll be sure to strap one of those on before my next 200 foot dive, knowing with total confidence that there's no way it could go off and rocket me to the surface accidentally.

"Man, these things really work! We've recovered 138 of them so far, and every last one had a dead diver attached to it! 100% effective!"

[Sounder]

I've got it!! We all carry a time-activated 100lbs lift bag strapped to our ass, and if we're underwater for more than 10 hours in a row, it'll automatically inflate and bring the diver to the surface... just be sure you're not hanging on a deco stop when that one-way ticket kicks in!!

Yeah. Sounds like a good idea. I'll be sure to strap one of those on before my next 200 foot dive, knowing with total confidence that there's no way it could go off and rocket me to the surface accidentally.

"Man, these things really work! We've recovered 138 of them so far, and every last one had a dead diver attached to it! 100% effective!"

Exactly.