Kia ora everybody my name is Nathan from the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council and I'm Tom from
the Mountain Safety Council and we're out here in the Copland Valley in South Westland filming
season 2 of the tramping video series we thought we'd take some time while we're at Welcome Flat
Hut to talk to you about distress beacons. It's a topic that has lots of questions on social media
so we're going to take a couple of minutes and run you through some of the basics
So the first thing that we should talk about before we get into these devices is the fact that
a cell phone in places like this is not gonna cut it you're not gonna have any reception it's
just not gonna do the trick if you're in trouble and so that's why you need a device like this
in the first place if you're going to be outside of cellphone reception so the first device we're
going to go through is a personal locator beacon or commonly known as a plb some of the pros with
the PLB is that they have really good battery life they can be quite small and compact and
really lightweight you can hire or buy a personal locator beacon so you've got a couple of options
if you're buying a Personal Locator Beacon then it's really important you register the device
and you can do that at beacons.org.nz when you're hiring one you obviously don't need
to do that that's taken care of for you one of the other benefits of these is that if you're
buying one once you buy it you own it and there's no further costs for ownership which is not the
case for satellite messengers but we'll get into that shortly yep that's right tom so a personal
locator beacon works on a different satellite network compared to a satellite messenger device
the beacons have a stronger signal so when you set one off it actually is picked up by the
Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand which is in Lower Hutt faster than a satellite messenger device
because they have a stronger frequency they're better off in some situations
in some environments in terms of getting that message out to the satellite network
but one of the downsides with a device like this is that it really only works in an emergency
situation there's no ability to have any two-way communication so you can't send a message saying
everything's okay we're at our destination or you can't say you know things are going okay but we're
held up it's really only useful when you're in an emergency situation and you need to get help
they're really good in the sense that they have a homing beacon in them so when search and
rescue are coming to look for you they can really pinpoint in on your precise location
so there are some pros and cons that you need to consider we get lots of questions around the
different models what's the best model ultimately they all have their different variations but you
just want to consider price size length of battery so have a think about those things
when you when you're shopping around and go into a store and talk to a pro about it i think that's
that on PL Beacons there Tom so we'll hand it over for the satellite messenger device yeah so
uh satellite messenger messenger devices are commonly being used as an alternative to a PLB
these days but there are some real key differences that it's really important you understand
if you're going to be making that choice there's a number of different models on the market they've
become really popular in the last sort of five years or so for this trip that we're on
today we've got a spot messenger and our primary device is a Garmin inReach
mini so basically the the main purpose of a satellite messenger is that it offers two-way
communication um so not only are you able to send messages away but you're able to get some back
they also have an sos function in most cases though it is not as strong and is not as fast
generally as a personal locator beacon is when you send off that sos notification
with a satellite messenger that actually needs to go to an international um sort of
processing centre if you will that then sends it to Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand
it's not a direct line so there will be a bit of a delay in terms of them getting that
um yeah as mentioned the because it runs on a GPS network a different satellite network uh sometimes
they'll have a little bit of a harder time getting your exact location correct particularly if you're
in a sort of confined valley environment like we're in right now but yeah those key benefits
being as mentioned before with a plb you can really only use it in an emergency with these
messengers you can use it for a lot of other purposes such as saying hey we're at the hut
we're all good everything's going according to plan or hey everything's totally fine but we're
just a bit delayed so you don't need to stress these are really useful functions with these
devices that you simply don't have with a plb so some of the sort of key benefits on that side
price wise a lot of them are pretty similar price to a PLB maybe it's slightly less
however most of them will will require that you have a subscription service
subscription to use their features um which in the long run might make them more expensive than a plb
um battery life-wise a plb only uses the battery when you use it uh whereas a inreach device is
going to or other satellite messenger is going to use it whenever you're messaging
so usually you want to make sure they're charged before you leave home whereas the plb
is charged as long as you don't use it so i think the key thing Tom is that
you know whether you're going out tramping hunting climbing whatever you might be doing
just consider your situation your circumstances eh have a think about the different environments
you're heading into and there is no one device that's perfect in every situation
there are pros and cons as we've talked about i personally kind of like carrying
two devices particularly on longer trips or trips that are a bit more you know challenging and for
the purposes of what we're doing here with our filming it's really great because we're able to
send a message to our families and our co-workers every day saying that we're all good or if you
know we need to get a helicopter transfer for one of our trips we can message the helicopter
company as well with us which is kind of cool um and if there was an emergency that's what we would
do we'd pull out the PLB and set that off so yeah hopefully that's been helpful um like i say
head into your local outdoor store and chat with the pros uh or send us a message on social media
and we can answer any more technical questions you've got thanks guys cheers.