Great Adventures Around the World | Take a Personal Locator Beacon on your Next Great Adventure

It’s cold, it’s raining, night is rapidly approaching and you’re fifteen miles away from your car in the middle of rugged wilderness with two broken ankles. Your solo great adventure is suddenly not so great. Your shouts for help have been met by silence and you don’t have anything left in the way of provisions. In excruciating agony, you remove your pack, fish out your personal locator beacon and activate it. The next morning, dopey on pain meds in a comfortable hospital bed with your very relieved family surrounding you, you reflect on the best piece of outdoor equipment in which you ever invested. 

Outdoor adventure sports tend to cost a lot and for many of us, equipment choices are often limited by the expense. Sure, we’d like the best sleeping bag, but we’ll make due with the lower-end model. Yeah, that super expensive backpack would be nice, but the cheaper model offers most of the same features. Our wallets, balanced with the nature of the adventure, determine just what we can get. But when it comes to real safety, the kind where life hangs in the balance, a smart outdoorsman won’t sacrifice critically important elements to save a buck. 

Personal locator beacons aren’t cheap. The ACR Electronics Terafix and Microfix, for example, run about $500.00 to $600.00 USD respectively. With prices like that, outdoor enthusiasts might find themselves inclined to opt for less expensive alternatives. It’s important to remember that the unit itself, however, is only part of the package. Coverage, subscription fees and emergency response offerings may be additional concerns. 

What personal locator beacons offer over cheaper alternatives are extremely long-lasting batteries (5 years in the case of the ACR offerings), extreme durability and no frills, proven life saving rescue resources. These things are not toys, folks, they are deadly serious. So serious, in fact, that the included literature with the ACR Terafix advises you to ask the following questions prior to use. 

Am I in danger of losing life, limb, eye sight or valuable property if I am not rescued soon? Am I in danger of not surviving the night or upcoming hours if not rescued soon? And the expectation is that you will answer yes to those questions before activating the device. 

Personal locator beacons such as the ACRs transmit a 406 MHz signal to satellites on the COSPAS-SARSAT network and to the GEOSAR network (if GPS data is present.)Your personal locator beacon is registered (by you) with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or your National Authority (if purchased outside the US). On activation, a series of events transpire including notification of your emergency contact list and nearest search and rescue (SAR) entities. This could be anything from the local constabulary to the Coast Guard. The point is you aren’t just activating an independent agency. You are activating anything and everything best suited to your rescue. 

Given their reach to extremely qualified search and rescue agencies and the incredible coverage the COSPAS-SARSAT network offers, personal locator beacons are worth every penny. Another feature to consider with these devices over other options is that there are no yearly membership or subscription fees levied. Your taxes take care of all that. 

While personal locator beacons can be expensive, the area of coverage provided, their durability, long life and, most importantly, their potential to make a life or death difference in the outcome of trouble on your great adventure make these an insurance policy you should seriously consider. There are less expensive options which may be better suited to your individual needs which we’ll discuss in our next post. Until then, stay safe out there.

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