I mean, you're a parent of a relatively young child, so I assume that was already the case ... ;-)
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Recco here, there and everywhere
- Thread starter Tricia
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I mean, you're a parent of a relatively young child, so I assume that was already the case ... ;-)
Ahhh but when you have joint custody, every other weekend I am free to do whatever I want
Ahhh but when you have joint custody, every other weekend I am free to do whatever I want
Except wake up later than 5:30am, apparently ;-)
I know. They still might have two of us do the reports. I might request that. Daily is a bit much. I'm a morning person, but having to be up that early EVERY DAY. And then be at work all day. Oy!
Damn, talk about thread drift!
Do it and go back to sleep. My daughter has to leave at 6:30 every morning to catch her middle school bus. I get up at 6:30 on instinct to make sure I hear her and walk across the house to check if I don't hear her up and around. I then get back in the bed for another 30-45 minutes unless I decide to start working earlier.
You're not going to convince the FCC with that weak argument. You would have to find a way to get the FCC to believe that everyone with a cell phone will turn that cell phone to airplane mode every time they drive or walk past an NDB or are near an airport.
Apps schmapps, the last time you put the phone in airplane mode is the last time you or anyone here had all their local oscillators off.
Cell phone frequencies were picked because they are highly absorbed by water in all its forms. That lets humidity in the air attenuate your tower signal so the guy three towers over can reuse the frequency. Good for cellphones, bad for avy transceivers.
Now notice that Recco is also within the water absorption band (again, intentionally). Within an order of magnitude (i.e. within a factor of 10 and we can do a square law computation if you like) you would have to make a cell phone of the same emitting power as the Recco helicopter units. That's - not going to fly very far.
Now one thing where having a cell phone do the job would be advantageous would be an Emergency Snow Mode where your cell phone stimulates your own Recco tag. The Recco helicopter unit then doesn't just look for it's own echo, but for an amplified, synthetically resonant echo.
Why is this better? Because all cellphones are then by default in finder mode - they only go active when hit by a gated (20ms ON, 80ms OFF) pulse from an active Recco helicopter unit. This conserves power and only the phones that the heli unit points at will go active. The phones are a lot closer to the tag within the snowpack, not close enough for near-field coupling but better positioned for aspect (e.g. tag antenna is end-on).
That is something I would even sign an FCC petition for.
I think you might be thinking of the Sprint protocol-level hack from around Y2K.
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You know when you say stuff like that everybody else thinks you must be McGyver or a genius Russian hacker. The Recco business model is safe.
dm
Teehee. You're right and I'm actually having a sad because you are right.
You act like Avy transceivers need to have range greater than that which cell phones need to be captured by the nearest cell tower. A cell phone avy beacon app ON ANY frequency only needs to have a range of a mile tops, probably really only half a mile. If the lost skier is farther away than that the rest of the group really has zero chance of locating the victim in time. I stand by my premise that such an app would be better than nothing and the FCC would agree under those conditions, different frequency than air and marine emergency, limited range, etc.
As long as the group can switch to find and get pings, direction, and distance displayed within half a mile from the victim's phone we're getting somewhere. If they know roughly what direction and distance to start the sweeps (where they last saw their friend) the noise from others can be managed some. Limited range also cuts down noise from others at the resort running their ski setting.
Imagine how much easier it would be to find someone in a tree well if they had some kind of a beacon that could be received by most smartphones. Yes, you would get false returns from all the other skiers using the same app that didn't know a search was on. But, if you could use the distance and direction to limit your targets we're probably going to save quite a few lives with mass adoption here.
I believe we need a thread called "Skier's Shark Tank". I could totally see investing in the development of this product.
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I mean, I use airplane mode all the time to conserve battery and because reception is terrible at my house, so I have used airplane to force wifi calling (although now I've been shown a setting so I don't need that). But I don't trust other people as far as I can throw them.
Yes. Avy transceivers need to transmit through a snow pack to a peer device. A peer device with the exact same antenna gain and the exact same operating power.
Cell phones don't transmit through snow packs and don't transmit to a peer device.
Cell phones transmit to a tower with a high gain antenna, which tower transmits to phones at significantly higher powers than phones are capable of. That Sprint cell phone radio app you mentioned? It went cell phone <-> tower <-> cell phone.
Peer-to-peer cellphone networks are bad, insanely short range, and they suck power from the phones at prodigious rates. And that's without a burial-grade snowpack on top of the phone.
Your proposal would therefore require all cellphones on the mountain to operate in high power ping mode all the time, sucking juice and creating radio noise. And even then they're less effective than traditional beacons because the operating frequency is sucked up by water. No high gain antennas anywhere in the system and therefore they're also less directional than traditional beacons.
My way only the buried cellphone goes high power, only after it knows there's a Recco looking for it. And it only broadcasts to a tag that's on your collar/arm/leg, to make the Recco's echo louder. It's only broadcasting through 2-4 feet. And there's a high gain antenna on the Recco heli unit.
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Here's an unfavorable review of cell phone avalanche search apps with a discussion of the challenges of cell phones vs traditional avalanche transceivers:
http://missoulaavalanche.org/wp-content/uploads/CAC-Smartphone-Avalanche-Search-Apps1.pdf
http://missoulaavalanche.org/wp-content/uploads/CAC-Smartphone-Avalanche-Search-Apps1.pdf
Oh the other hand, I think the RoadId Ecrumbs app is pretty useful:
http://ecrumbs.roadid.com/
It's targeted at cyclists, but works well for skiers, hikers, etc, as long as there is cell coverage. You text or email friends a link to a web page with your track (ecrumbs).
Here's an example map of a half-day of mine at Mary Jane. If I got lost in the trees somewhere it would certainly save a lot of trouble finding me.
http://ecrumbs.roadid.com/
It's targeted at cyclists, but works well for skiers, hikers, etc, as long as there is cell coverage. You text or email friends a link to a web page with your track (ecrumbs).
Here's an example map of a half-day of mine at Mary Jane. If I got lost in the trees somewhere it would certainly save a lot of trouble finding me.
I use "find my phone" all the time to see where my kids are within 50 feet. That uses GPS but also requires cell tower pings. As for avalanche, if someone's not buried that deep, such as hanging upside down in a tree well I still would bet cell phone signals are string enough to be utilized within half a mile. Mark my words, this will be reality within the next 10 years and specialized, dedicated avy beacons will be much more of a niche thing just like CB radios are now..
The battery in my beacon lasts for days. Out in the cold, my cell battery lasts as long as a fart in the wind, even if I'm barely using it.
You need to turn off the wifi. Mine lasts all day and still has over 50% at the end of the day when I do that. All the juice gets spent searching for wifi connection where there is none. I noticed some of the other apps in that PDF relied on wifi connections as well. It would have to be a true beacon rather than a continuous connection signal to be practical.
My kids play Pokemon Go all day in their spare time and their phones really don't last long without charging. That is until we got them these.. This triples the battery life..
"Find my phone" apps can be useful, but the phone has to be turned on and respond to a ping, at least with the native Apple version.
The benefit of the Road ID app is it's constantly updating the website with your location and it's easy to share the info with others. The Road ID website still knows your last location and prior track even if your phone is dead or can't get service. It might not be much use in most avalanches, but could be very useful when someone disappears skiing, probably far more common.
The problem of the Road ID app is you have to remember to turn it on, so you can't count on your kids using it. I saw a kid's GPS watch at the Verizon store they claimed worked similarly and could call a handful of numbers. I'll be looking for something like that when my kiddos are ready to head out on their own.
I'm not buying that cell phones will ever replace dedicated Avy beacons. Anyone going into avalanche prone terrain is crazy if they don't have both, and that's not changing in our lifetimes.
You need to turn off the wifi. Mine lasts all day and still has over 50% at the end of the day when I do that. All the juice gets spent searching for wifi connection where there is none. I noticed some of the other apps in that PDF relied on wifi connections as well. It would have to be a true beacon rather than a continuous connection signal to be practical.
My kids play Pokemon Go all day in their spare time and their phones really don't last long without charging. That is until we got them these.. This triples the battery life..
You need to not make assumptions. #1 assumption here is that I'm not cursed when it comes to cell phones. But I am. I do have a battery pack and I usually have wifi disabled on the slopes, for exactly the reasons you suggest.
I'm sure one of my apps is misbehaving, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Anyway, my point wasn't about MY phone - it was about whether cell phones are reasonable as a replacement for avy beacons. So far I see no evidence of a trend toward longer battery life in phones.
The trick is not having the phone interfere with the beacon.
