It'll need to be approved in individual countries so it'll probably get turned on in a lot more areas.
In the US there's an explicit exception to life threatening emergencies that let you use basically any radio frequency I wonder how many countries have something like that that could at least allow them to enable the emergency contact portion of this without the check-in for non emergency situations.
As someone who grew up in the era before mobile phones, it truly is strange to see devices that do roughly everything Captain Kirk's communicator could do. But in my lifetime, and available to average people.
If it did, Scotty would be working on an adtech backend, Bones would be researching ways to make games more addictive and humanity would never have left Earth.
When watching sci-fi movies and TV, I often wonder what happened with the development of gaming, social media, and virtual reality in the timeline of the show. It seems like in most of the cases where they actually get mentioned in sci-fi, it's kind of dystopian.
Star Trek at least shows using the holodeck for leasure, though they don't go into the specifics of using the holodeck for communication (you could be in the "same room" as someone lightyears away!) or for gaming.
Didn't Kirk have to cheat to beat Spock's unbeatable game? Games might not have disappeared, but maybe they changed to be unrecognizable by people that can only travel at slower than warp speed.
Growing up during proliferation of mobile devices but in financially-limited circumstances, there are certain things that I’ve relegated to “not for me” because of an imprinted cost.
Getting a smartphone and paying a recurring fee for data (when I was perfectly capable) was still a major point of hesitation for me.
Satellite-based communication devices remains as one of the self-imposed unobtaniums.
“Available to average people” that’s what amazes me. I remember when I played with an iPhone for the first time. It was an amazing device, but I thought it was a luxury device for rich people only. A few years later smartphones got a lot cooler and cheaper, to the point where it actually helped spread the internet to sections of the population that weren’t able or didn’t want to use a PC.
I used to buy used cars for less than the price of a new top-end iPhone. They aren't phones, they are pocket computers/jewelry that sometimes make phone calls.
As dystopian as the keynote for these new emergency features felt, they are real-life helpful features. 99.99% of people will never need it but for the small fraction who do it's amazing.
All the features, and none of the freedom. Kirk and the crew would have a lot of bad things to say about the iPhone and it's walled lawn. It's tragic that I can't install an application I wrote without going through Apple on the thousand dollar computer that I bought.
I find it amusing that Star Trek didn't anticipate communicators or tricorders having a flashlight function like our phones do. When they need lights, they either carry special-purpose ones or shoot a rock with a phaser to make it glow.
Generously, maybe someone did think of it, but it would have been too difficult to make a prop with a bright enough light source.
I use my phone's flashlight a good bit, it is very useful. That said, if I was going on some away mission where lighting was going to be questionable, I'd probably bring some kind of dedicated lighting equipment like a flashlight.
My flashlights have adjustable beams. They throw out many times more light than my phone's flashlight. Using the dedicated flashlight gives a way better lighting experience than using my phone's flashlight. But it is like cameras, the best flashlight is the one on you.
As far as I remember the shooting rock with phaser thing was more about having a source of heat, as not to freeze to death.
I can see the communicator on the chest being used as a flashlight with the powerful LED we have today.
But 90s TV show prop departments would probably have had one hell of a time trying to make that work, and practical, so instead they gave everybody futuristic looking flashlights aka "palm beacons" [0]
Pretty much everyone who does field work still has a flashlight. It runs down the battery and you might not want to be holding a phone if there's rain. Plus, flashlights are very fast to access. And often brighter.
I was really wondering what kind of satellite-based emergency SOS they were using -- mostly because I'd never heard of it until it was being shipped in a commercial product, which is something very rare to see.
So basically, they have their own infrastructure for their own proprietary 911 service with global coverage? It's really amazing that we live in a world where we can have such infrastructure, but at the same time, it's owned and controlled by a single corporation.
I notice there's multiple mentions of these satellites working with the "Find My" service, which keeps track of where a device is (in order to find it where it's lost). So I guess all this infrastructure also allows Apple to pinpoint down any user worldwide -- even if they're off-grid.
It's suppose to be on Globalstar's existing network which would be S-band and L-band but CDMA. It's not 5G-NR just yet though that's likely where they're headed.
I think Apple added n53 as part of this deal at Globalstar's request. Globalstar is trying to lease their spectrum terrestrially for small cell networks and network capacity solutions for the carriers.
The "emission type" for the satellite service is 198KG1D and operates under FCC rule Part 25 (Satellite Communications). They run 400mW or so up on 1.6GHz L-band, and ~90mW downlink S-band.
>It's really amazing that we live in a world where we can have such infrastructure, but at the same time, it's owned and controlled by a single corporation.
I get this sentiment. Globalstar does have competitors at least. Iridium and Inmarsat offer comparable services though not as seamlessly integrated into a popular consumer device.
I do wonder what happens if you aren't paying for the service but have an emergency. I guess they just don't connect you at all? Is there an automatic charge for accessing it?
It's currently free (for the first two years after purchase of the device), and I suspect that while emergency SOS messaging will always remain free, they will add paid P2P messaging soon.
GPS has always been available to get location information even offline. What you usually don't get at the user end is a map of where you are because maps apps don't cache or download automatically. I've installed OSMAnd+ and downloaded a lot of maps to avoid that and I wish Google Maps or Apple Maps made it easier to download a large swath like you can with OSM. (you can even download POI to still be able to do some searching for places if you don't have an actual address)
As for infrastructure I think Verizon is doing something similar with Starlink and there are multiple possible satellite constellations that could be connected too Apple is just the first to include what I think has to be a new radio or radio component.
I believe it is T-Mobile and Starlink, though very early stage (just a press release[0] about "a vision to give customers a crucial additional layer of connectivity" that "aims to work" with existing phones, far as I can tell).
And yes, the Apple announcement is just the productization of a feature in the Qualcomm X65[1]. But I think this is a case where the technical implementation is the easiest part; I would be surprised of other X65 adopters also delivered satellite comms, at least unless/until it's obvious it's driving phone purchasing decisions.
I think it depends massively on how much it costs the company to provide. If it's just a chip and a bit more software I think companies will include it. It's not clear from the press reports if the money Apple spent on building up base stations for this are just for them or if the satellite providers could use them for other companies phones.
"Band n53" has been widely reported in the context of various iPhone satellite rumors, but I still believe that this was actually just bad reporting: Band n53 is essentially terrestrial LTE/5G usage of Globalstar's global spectrum rights in a band that was previously designated for ground-to-space usage.
Whatever the iPhone 14 is using to talk to the Globalstar satellites, I'd be extremely surprised if it looked anything like LTE or 5G at the physical or logical layer.
I remember reading that they are in fact using n53 2.4Ghz. Remember this is a fallback for areas without cell service, and a satellite signal is much weaker on the ground than any terrestrial signal.
Given that it's a two-way service, and Globalstar satellites use the 2480-2500 MHz range for downlink transmissions, it must be using 2.4 GHz, yes.
But my point is that this probably has very little to do with Globalstar's terrestrial band 53 efforts, other than possibly sharing some HF hardware in the new iPhones given that they support both that terrestrial LTE/5G band and satellite messaging.
> I wish Google Maps or Apple Maps made it easier to download a large swath like you can with OSM.
Google Maps on iOS let’s you choose squares on the planet and download offline maps.
Open the app, click your initial at the top right and you’ll see Offline Maps in the drop-down.
Driving directions only though. But you can search for POIs and it will navigate you there. Or you can look at the maps/streets.
I use it regularly in USA and Europe when I don’t have a data plan there. Or when I’m low/out of data in Canada because Canadian telecom sucks. Or when Rogers shits the bed.
I also have Kiwix with full copies of Wikipedia (about 85gb) and a few other resources. And a small solar panel so when doomsday hits…
Yeah I've used that in the past on Android and it's been very sketchy. The app will seemingly let the map expire and if I don't remember to check every time I go up to the mountains where I need it I'll usually get stuck without a working up to date map. It also doesn't seem to hold that many POI locations so I'm stuck just navigating to the right town and hoping I get signal eventually to find the actual place I'm going. OSMAnd+ however just keeps the data even if it's older so I'll always have at least some street data.
The maps used to expire after 30 days, but is now 365 days. I agree: it’s arbitrary and unnecessary.
It does background refresh but unsure how great it is. Right know my maps expire with different dates between July and November 2023, so I guess it’s keeping up to date enough.
Maybe it's better now I have haven't travelled much this year and after downloading the OSM data I haven't bothered with offline google maps because I have all the roads and more already.
This article from LeMonde seems to imply that they're using Globalstar:
> "To offer this new feature, Apple had to integrate a miniature antenna in its smartphone. It captures part of the signal of satellite constellations without relying on a satellite dish or a specific telephone handset. The iPhone manufacturer signed an agreement with Globalstar, one of the operators of low-altitude constellations, sets of satellites flying at about 500 kilometers from the Earth, in order to cover low-coverage areas of the globe. Specializing since 2007 in professional satellite messaging, Globalstar explained that it reached an agreement to launch 17 new satellites for 327 million dollars, 95% of which will be financed by Apple in exchange for 85% of their bandwidth."
The "85% of their bandwidth" part is super interesting. It implies usage for much more than occasional emergencies. Globalstar has ~12Mhz of global S-Band spectrum[0], which they describe as "3.7 Billion MHz-POP", a unit I'm not grokking.
But I am pretty sure that is a LOT more bandwidth than what will be used for highly compressed text messages in emergencies.
A MHz-POP is just bandwidth times population covered by the Geographic Service Area (i.e., where the company is licensed to operate). For example, in the US, they would have 11.5 MHz x 330 M = 3.79 Billion MHz-POP.
Thank you! Doesn't that seem like a weird metric? I would think MHz/POP would make more sense. I guess the idea is to assume unlimited and independent channels to everyone as a first order?
I think multiplying by population serves as a way to normalize for link speed. Ten people who use a lot of spectrum are probably bigger customers than ten people who use a tiny sliver of spectrum, and thus constitute a bigger user base.
MHz-POP makes the most sense in cell networks, where an operator (AT&T, T-Mobile,...) wants to acquire a spectrum license in a particular region of the country. Evaluating the MHz-POP makes sense as the price they are willing to pay varies a lot depending on the population density in that region area. In general, cell networks can reuse spectrum more easily (deploy more towers, add more sectors), and they design their network deployment to hit whatever MHz/customer they are targeting (which mostly depends on the technology 3G/4G/5G).
In sat-networks, well, MHz-POP doesn't matter that much, because, generally, every operator is licensed to operate in the whole country. As you mentioned, what really matters is (a) the bandwidth of their license allocation (e.g., Globalstar is 11.5 MHz), and (b) how efficiently can they reuse spectrum:
* how many beams can they land (# satellite x # beams / satellite)?
* how much freedom do they have to chunk bandwidth and allocate it to individual beams based on demand?
* what type of satellite are they using, bent-pipe or regenerative payload?
* how big are these beams?
* can they allocate resources dynamically or is everything fixed?
* how much power does the satellite have? how big are the terminal antennas? what kind of link-budget can they close?
In the end, the MHz/customer they can achieve depends on the answer to all these questions.
Anyone know performance wise between Garmin's use of Iridium and Globalstar?
Iridium has been around for soo long...I am getting constant outages from the status page. Kind of disconcerting at times.
Ah, I found the following article that somewhat explains the different technologies w/
"The main difference between Iridium and Globalstar is the relaying mechanism. Iridium requires relaying between satellites. Globalstar requires relaying between satellites and earth stations."
At first I thought that Apple might be using the Gallileo sattellites put up by EU, but it looks like they have their own thing going with Globalstar. This kind of makes sense, and near-earth satellites are easier to reach for a phone.
I'm glad to see that they at least talked to some IRL dispatchers for this press release, which hopefully suggests that they've been doing it all along.
But really, I desperately hope that we can find a way to educate folks on the proper usage of technology like this (which, if you count things like the Garmin inReach and the Spot devices, has been available for a decade).
They're undoubtedly life saving, but they also are taxing mostly volunteer-run search and rescue organizations with folks who really probably don't need help, they just needed to bring some water and a jacket. But they didn't , because they didn't know better, and now need someone to risk themselves on their behalf.
It makes me nervous about the longevity of volunteer-run search and rescue organizations, frankly. It's unfortunate that these are the majority, at least in the rural parts of USA that draw lots of outdoor adventurers.
Well that’s the GPS point. Make this more casually available and folks are likely to more casually use it.
The problem for the teams isn’t necessarily finding the party, we’ve had these beacons for years. Rather they have to climb into the mountains in the first place to solve what could have, ostensibly, been readily prevented.
Thus taxing a limited resource even further.
What should temper that is now there perhaps may be signs posted telling folks about the service, and that help is available (or not) but it’s likely going to be rather expensive if they have to come get you. It’s never been suggested that while the S&R teams maybe volunteer, as I understand the rescued party incurs costs of the operation.
Actually, in many places in the United States, SAR calls don't cost you anything.
Usually it's the ambulance / helicopter ride. But even then, there are helicopter operators (like the U.S. military, which responds to many SAR calls where I live) that don't charge.
At least in Germany I know that the perspective on this is that you never want someone to even think about taking cost into consideration when they decide to make an emergency call.
In the US there are people who drive to the emergency room and wait outside in the parking lot to see if they get better or if they really need to go inside. Some of those people have insurance but would pay a deductible.
I don't have data to support this, but I guess that at least 40% of Americans would agree with the statement, "I take cost into consideration when I make a call to emergency services."
You can be given a bill in some places under a limited set of circumstances but you mostly won't get charged as I understand it (at least until you get into the regular medical system per usual). I would assume if this started to become a real problem, you might see more charging--although I assume S&R teams wouldn't, for the most part, want people in trouble to hold off on calling for help because they might get a $10K bill.
It depends on who shows up. Not every call is going to get a full blown SAR response, and a lot of the country doesn't even have SAR teams anyway.
You'll get the local 911 response units, and it might be a Sheriff's deputy, fire, or EMS.
If you're in California you're also likely to get a rescue helicopter operated by CHP, and if they pluck you out of a ravine, the bill is $zero. Really, it's taxpayer funded. We operate with them quite often.
It will make each individual SAR easier, but if more people rely on this instead of proper planning for a trip, the overall increased burden on volunteer organizations will be unsustainable.
Certainly, yes. My anxiety around the broad adoption of features like this isn't really the individual calls, because they're likely to be fairly mundane / close to trail heads.
Rather, my concern is with the volume. Lots of "I'm Cold, Please Help" calls could take resources away from rarer but far more resource-intensive "My leg is broken, and I"m 10 miles out" calls.
The info could be used by volunteers such as NGOs with a 4x4 rescue team. I have a friend in such an org and they help a lot of naïve people who get stuck in the mud/snow. He got into the NGO by getting stuck and being pulled out by another volunteer. I was with him and another guy when that occured. They should be able to help "I'm cold" and other less severe cases. They always cooperate with authorities (police, gendarmerie, fire dept) and the cooperation goes both ways. Also keep in mind that there's a very thin line between "I'm cold" and potentialy deadly hypothermia.
It’s really not that big of a deal. You could just triage calls for help and put them in order of priority on who to help first based on how difficult it would be, severity of the situation, and probability of success. The lowest level requests like for some water or a jacket could routinely go unserved.
I'm a search and rescue medic and I volunteer (although not in the States), but would have the exact opposite outlook on this. Better comms may lead to more shouts but it will definitely lead to better outcomes for casualties.
We always prefer calls to come in as early as possible, where maybe an issue can be resolved with advice or a daylight shout to an warm, ambulatory casualty in mild distress. That will always be preferable to a long search for a casualty in possibly deteriorating weather, losing light, without comms, with the prospect of a rescue turning into a recovery.
Mobile phones may have greatly increased the number of SAR shouts worldwide, but also massively reduced shout lengths. Searching used to be the largest time sink in every shout, which is no longer the case.
Every SAR team has frivolous calls, but that's part of the game.
That's a good perspective. Undoubtedly better communication saves time for everyone, and improves outcomes.
I didn't really communicate this well, but my real fear is this: that folks who otherwise might not journey out into somewhat challenging situations because of their lack of confidence in their self-sufficiency might decide to do so because they can "call for help if they need it."
SAR's around the US are experience this in very high volumes.
I've sort of come around on this after discussing with a number of search and rescue folks. I'm sure there's some number of "I'm cold and my jeans are soaked. Come get me." There's doubtless some of that but, as you say, that's counterbalanced by by people who have a legitimate issue who can make an emergency call before the problem is really serious.
Part of me doesn't love that there's an increasing expectation that you're always able to be in contact. But, so it goes.
I wonder how many ppl will now travel to more remote areas with a false sense of security (and being woefully under prepared) that you can "Just call" for help.
As a paying customer with Garmin's inReach service, I'm acutely aware of how spotty and unreliable the service can be based on environment and current surroundings.
The same amount that did when the cellphone was invented, when Selective Availability was turned off, when the safety match was invented, when the chronometer was invented....
I think it's similar to how injury stats are up in auto accidents. It looks bad if you misread the data, but it's wonderful with proper context that safety features, first response, and treatment are saving more lives. So many of those shouts are people who would have died in an earlier era.
"A $450 million investment from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund provides the critical infrastructure that supports Emergency SOS via satellite for iPhone 14 models."
"Once received by a ground station, the message is routed to emergency services that can dispatch help, or a relay center with Apple-trained emergency specialists if local emergency services cannot receive text messages."
"In 2021, Apple announced an acceleration in its US investments, with plans to make new contributions of more than $430 billion over a five-year period."
This is great, but people do still need to keep in mind that this is not a full replacement of the emergency beacons that use the Cospas-Sarsat system, which would work anywhere, from pole to pole.
If you are going to do extreme hiking in Patagonia, get a real distress beacon. There is no service charge except for the device itself.
This is no joke - I had to use mine in the middle of Death Valley (of all places) during a seizure-like episode. Saved my life.
Just like with Apple Watch Ultra, Its for people with serious hobbies but not professionals or those on the extreme end. I think they have a name for that market segment.
> LTE Band 53 is a part of the TDD (Time Division Duplex) LTE spectrum that requires only a single frequency band for both the uplink and downlink. LTE Band 53 has a frequency range from 2483.5 - 2495 MHz with a bandwidth of 11.5 MHz.
In the earlier videos on it they showed that the phone has to be pointed a certain way (which makes sense given the power constraints), but you are guided through the process.
If you’re looking for emergency comms where cell service is unavailable, you can do really well with a 2m/70cm Baofeng UV-5R. It’ll run you like $60 between the technician’s license (easy to get) and the radio, no subscription. From mountains (no service), I’ve gotten into repeaters 60 miles away. Knowing the community on those frequencies, they’ll treat your emergency with the same respect and decorum as those submitted through the SOS feature (many even train for it through organizations like ARES).
I certainly don’t mean to poo-poo this announcement in HN commenter fashion—-I think it’s actually really great to have. Just wanted to highlight an alternative to shelling out $1k+ for a capable phone if you don’t have one.
Getting that sort of range is not common. Most of it is line of sight. Sat comms work far at sea where VHF is useless. With ARES, you are relying on an inconsistent volunteer network with spotty results by location and time.
I'm a licensed ham and have worked emergency events. I would not rely upon this if my life depended on it.
I'm also a HAM and work Search and Rescue, I would also never use this as my primary emergency device unless I had someone I knew actively monitoring the frequency. Buy something like a Garmin InReach Mini (~$15 a month subscription free) or a PLB (no monthly cost)
No one here has mentioned this here, surprisingly, but the UX on this feature is absolutely incredible. Clear, thoughtful, helpful, and deeply integrated with user services. It almost makes me _want_ to get into trouble, just to be able to use this service!
This is really going to eat into Garmin's Inreach market (ditto for Spot, Zoleo, etc).
It says free for the first 2 years. I'm curious what the yearly cost will be after that, and how it will compare to an Inreach plan. On an ongoing basis, it's the subscription fees that really add up.
The bigger threat to Garmin is probably just the new GPS. There are probably a lot of folks who will now put off buying their first bike computer for a couple years now that an iPhone with Strava is going to be almost as accurate as an Edge 530 or whatever. Having a real bike computer is still going to be better, but by significantly less than it was a year ago.
One doesn't need to buy an expensive Garmin model. I've got an Edge 130 and an older Edge 25 that I've bought second hand. The 130 came as an upgrade to the older device and is perfect for my use. Both devices connect with my Forerunner 245 watch for the HR. Whenever I don't want to use them (commute or sub 20 km workout), I just use the watch. Dual frequency GPS is probably going to make its way into cheaper Garmin models soon enough, maybe thanks to Apple.
Having a phone on the handlebar/top tube is cumbersome and annoying, battery life is crap and distractions galore. I don't want needless phone calls from annoying people interrupting my workout and distracting me from watching the road. I've set up my Garmin devices to ignore phone calls and texts from the phone during workouts.
I've set up my Garmin devices to ignore phone calls and texts from the phone during workouts.
As an FYI, if you have an iPhone, you can set a "Fitness" focus mode that turns on automatically when a workout is started. From there, you can specify which contacts can pop a notification during workouts (or none at all). I let my wife and my parents get through.
But, like you, not that I'd use a phone as a bike computer to begin with.
Some cyclists do already use iPhones with the Strava app as bike computers but they don't work very well. The third-party mounts are kind of janky, battery life is terrible, screen visibility is poor in some lighting conditions, and they don't support the ANT+ industry standard for common sensors such as power meters. An iPhone is adequate for casual use, but Garmin isn't really trying to target that market anyway. Those casual cyclists don't care about recording precise GPS tracks.
The latest high-end Garmin devices do support multi-frequency GPS just as accurate as the iPhone 14. Those chips aren't included in Garmin's mid-range products like Edge 5XX/8XX series bike computers but will probably be added in the next refresh.
As an enthusiast cyclist I don't think they is a threat to Garmin and Wahoo. The customers for those are enthusiasts who ride in all conditions and want a rugged device, a device with good battery life, a slim form factor that doesn't look off place on handlebars. Bike computers offer all of those, while phones do it only in a limited way. That has been driving cyclists to use bike computers for years, and not the lack of GPS precision. So I think nothing will change.
More casual cyclists might use their phones since they already have those and don't want to buy an extra bike computer - but that was already true in the past.
Spot and zoleo for sure, not sure about garmin yet. I’ll be keeping mine as you can text people with it outside or an emergency which is super handy. “I’m late don’t worry” or “I’m stuck but ok”
I’m not sure it will eat into those markets. Those are device for people who know they are going off-grid and may need both emergency comms and who (typically) also want to be able to let people at home know where they are and how things are going.
My take is the Apple SOS is for people who are unprepared and surprised, and who wouldn’t have bought a satellite comm device and paid for the subscription because they weren’t expecting the emergency.
I’m a happy iPhone 14 user who will get this nice feature, but I’m not planning to cancel my InReach subscription ($20/month, pause/resume any time), which I have never used to call for a rescue but have used a lot to let family know where I am and that things are fine when overlanding. And Inreach works right from the dashboard while driving, no need to get situated perfectly.
Maybe this is a harbinger and future enhancements will kill Inreach, but at least for now it feels like a very different application.
One can certainly imagine future iterations where you can text arbitrary people for $1/text or whatever. A dedicated robust device with long battery life would still have its niche but that would certainly limit the market even more.
One of my buddies does S&R in Marin county, they get called for people getting lost 300 yards off trail that were going for a walk CONSTANTLY. Just people out for a walk, no cell coverage. They never have gear with them. My friend said this a game changer.
Not wrong, it’s never wrong to call for help if you need help. Call early before you’re hypothermic, dehydrated and your cell battery is dead.
A lot of my buddies rescues are older people who just got a little lost, or slipped down a steep embankment and can’t get back up. The worst ones are when that happens, but it’s been 3 days and the chances they find a live person are more slim.
The SAR people vastly prefer finding people alive, so if you need help, give them a chance for a happy ending by calling.
Yeah, it doesn't take much. People should be in better shape with smartphones in their pockets but I wonder how many even think about the compass or have downloaded maps if they aren't in cellphone coverage. And it's not like the commercial map providers are all that good with mapping trails.
Absent some combination of map and compass--in some form--it's super-easy to get totally disoriented absent trail and landmarks. Long before cell phones, I still remember going on a casual short off-trail jaunt to a lighthouse in Nova Scotia and suddenly realizing I really didn't know where I was. Took a deep breath, carefully figured things out, and I was fine (the boundaries were pretty constrained anyway). But it's not hard.
From what I've been told, there are a ton of incidents of just 50-70 year olds that are out for a daily walk and a couple things go wrong. The service in the hills around here is pretty poor, so it's not hard for me to imagine that this was a regular walk, you take a pint of water and a sweater and that's it.
I own a PLB that I use for safety when spearfishing from a kayak in Northern CA, but I don't bother throwing it in my pocket if I'm just walking the dog in the woods for a couple minutes. I can see this being a big help.
Going onto real backcountry trails unprepared is also very common, unfortunately. I see it all the time on trails in the Cascades where there's no cellphone coverage whatsoever (mountain valleys) and it's 10+ miles from the trailhead to any human residence. People still come wearing nothing but t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops (!!!). Sometimes not even a bottle of water, too.
And, pretty much every year, there's at least one hiker who goes missing for days. If they're young and lucky, they manage to subsist, and SAR finds them eventually. If not... well, sometimes another hiker finds the body years later, but there's no shortage of names on the missing person list, either.
SAR here in BC Canada vastly prefer that you call at the first hint of trouble, even if you don’t think you necessarily need help.
They would much rather be on alert and be stood down, or assist someone over the phone who called early and is easy to find and help. The problem is that many people wait until conditions deteriorate or they are much more lost.
Sending a team of a few people to go out and call your name along a trail during the day in clear weather is easy. Sending a team of people to find a hypothermic or injured person at night and extract them is an order of magnitude more involved and risky.
In other words, no one will be upset if you call out of caution.
I once visited the Joshua Tree National Park where I went off trail to visit the Heart Rock. It was a very short distance off trail so I wasn't very careful. Having found the rock easily (just a short distance off trail, maybe five minutes of walking) I relaxed and took a break near the rock. And by it was time to go back I had forgotten how I walked from the trail. It took me at least fifteen minutes to find the trail again.
People get lost even closer than that to the trail in thick bush. There was a lost hiker here a few years ago - when they eventually found him and retraced the steps, it turned out that he came within a hundred yards of the trail more than once while trying to find his way back (but could never tell).
And if you stay lost through the night, hypothermia can get you fast even in places where you only need a t-shirt during the day.
I was just looking at the Garmin inReach on REI’s sale a few minutes ago. $350 for the device ($50 off right now), $30 activation fee, and $12/month for two years is $668. Upgrading my 3 year old phone is $800. Kind of a no-brainer to use the phone I’d be carrying anyway.
I’m not looking to use it for weeks-long trips. Mostly trail running and maybe a few days in the back country.
I've looked at the InReach. If I were doing a lot of solo remote backcountry travel (whether hiking or something else), I'd probably feel that buying one and getting a subscription was the prudent thing to do. However, for occasional use for mostly day hikes with patchy cell phone coverage? That's hard to justify whereas I might consider (though won't) upgrade my phone a bit sooner than I might have otherwise for this feature.
Echoing others, I don't think this will have a huge impact as iPhone SOS is a last resort for those who are unprepared
Garmin inReach is a robust and rugged satellite communicator that out classes iPhone emergency SOS greatly
- inreach doesn't require "tracking" the satellite as it has a stronger antenna
- inreach is more waterproof, dust proof atd shock resistant (no touch screen)
- inreach has higher battery life, SOS can be activated while the device is off
- ability to send messages, which can be critical if there are no cell towers that can be boosned/activated
That said, it is a great innovation; I think the Apple Watch Ultra will cut more into the diving watch market than the iPhone into the satellite communicator market
Just like the best camera is the one you actually have with you, the best rescue device is the one you actually have with you. And for many people, that’s not going to be a Garmin inReach because they don’t own a device and they don’t have a subscription to the service.
I don’t see the market for a high end dive watch without air integration, but with the UX they have.
The people that don’t care about AI dive with a perdix or tables, but basically require something you can operate with gloves on. The rest of them with the money for a nice watch really want AI.
Many GUE divers do use dive computers. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you don't rely on the computer for anything safety critical.
Most dive computers make it difficult or impossible to do dive planning for more complex scenarios. For example, the Garmin Descent Mk2 has a Plan Dive activity profile. But it only supports square profile dives, doesn't properly handle travel gas, and doesn't generate contingency plans for loss of deco gas. So we have to do dive planning with other software that can generate tables.
Garmin sells a high-end dive watch without air integration as the Descent Mk2 / Mk2S. They also have the Mk2i with AI. They don't release sales numbers so it's not clear how well those products are doing in the market.
Personally I use the Mk2 because I mostly do technical dives and have little use for AI, but divers like me are a tiny market niche. The latest Shearwater Perdix models do support AI. If Garmin launches a Descent "Mk3" product line as expected next year it might include AI as a standard feature across all models.
Ah, yes the garmin watches are nice as well. I swear they just added the AI to the perdix line to catch the super rich gear nerd + rec diver market, because who needs a multi-gas full deco computer and is going to use AI.
Eh, I've been thinking about getting one of the Garmin dive watches but the stupid subscription for apples is more of a deal breaker than the air integration.
Apple watch with dive computer and air integration though would be awesome. Garmins is $1500 (+700$) so the margin should be there.
> Garmin inReach is a robust and rugged satellite communicator
I own one and when I brought it on a remote expedition I found it to be a buggy POS: duplicated messages, stuck connection requiring resets, garbled messages.
That being said, the current iPhone 14 satellite function wouldn’t have worked at all for my purpose in those circumstances.
It won't. I have an InReach Mini that I take with me hiking and mountain biking. I use the capability to send non-emergency texts almost every time I'm out when not in cell range. I've never (thankfully) had to use the Emergency capability. What the Apple function will do is lead to a flood of people triggering emergency alerts when they drop their water bottle on a 3 mile day hike in the local park.
I have both an inReach and an iPhone 14. Haven't made a decision yet myself if I will keep it. Some pros for the inReach:
1. It's nice to have a backup.
2. The battery life on the inReach is upwards of a month and it's more rugged.
3. You can throw it in your pack, forget about it, and somehow it stills gets a signal.
3. Garmin has a dedicated communications center (IERCC) that has tons of experience coordinating with first responders. They will keep your emergency contacts updated about your rescue. Apple's system is less proven.
I see the InReach as the system to use if you are an avid outdoors-person. This setup is well suited to the millions who took up hiking as a way to get out of the house during Covid and now maybe go out to the wilderness a couple times a summer but don't fully grasp the risks that can be out there.
Another use case: The there are two highways between my metro area and the Pacific coast. Both are pretty remote through the forest. One has decent coverage with only a couple of mile long dropouts along the way. The other road has essentially zero cell coverage for about 20 miles and spotty coverage for another 20 miles. Winter travelers have gone off the road and not been found for hours or even days. This device could certainly save a life in that case.
I suspect the algorithm is just the frontloaded questions they ask you -- of course they can shrink all that down into a handful of bytes and unpack it on the other end as "car crash, 3 people, injuries reported, lat/long".
So the percentage "works", in a way, until you get to the freeform text.
Also, a 75% reduction (which I assume was meant by their 300 percent) is not that impressive when it comes to text compression. I'd guess that should be easily reachable with zstd by just creating a pre-shared dictionary generated from a bunch of typical emergency messages. Especially when those messages are partially auto-generated by a wizard-style questionnaire and will thus adhere to a previously-known structure and contain a lot of known elements and words.
You know damn well there's a new "Staff Engineer" at Apple who fluffed this "algorithm" up as an argument for a promotion from Senior Engineer. And likely a few product folks and managers who ballooned this entire project way out of proportion for their own career advancement.
that is awesome. I wonder if this (it must be) amounts to a hardware or software upgrade on satellites already in orbit, along with updates to the phone's iOS right ? This article just mentions the 'client-side' changes but .. there has to be some accounting of the hardware in space being used right?
The United States and Canada are really, really big. There are big swaths of those countries (especially Canada) where people regularly live / drive / recreate, but are several hours driving away from cell phone service.
A lot of people go hiking and few of them buy sat phones or epirbs. It's nice to have. We're well past the point of diminishing returns for smartphone features, yes.
I spend the majority of my time in the mountains here in Estes Park, Colorado where I carry the following in the winter - for both climbing and skiing:
- Probe
- Shovel
- Beacon
- InReach Mini
I also work SAR and my partner has worked dispatch for the National Park Service here and it's not uncommon for someone to be trying to climb something akin to Longs Peak late fall in a tshirt and shorts - having absolutely no idea what they are doing but hiking it because they saw it on All Trails.
This isn't meant for heli-skiers who go out with a few thousand bucks of equipment. None of the average hikers I know own a satellite phone, plenty of them like to hike alone, and an hour of walking into the woods (hardly a strenuous hike) will frequently land you somewhere with patchy service (and this is in a country with perfectly well-functioning infrastructure, not the middle of the Rocky Mountains.)
I'm sure this is going to lead to a few spectacular, high-profile rescues, but I'd bet the average use case is going to be "saved me three hours of crawling through the woods on a broken ankle to get back to the last place I had cell service."
I live fifty miles west of a major Northeast city and cell phone is patchy at my house without WiFi assist. I'm sure there tons of spots within an hour drive of my house where I hike that have patchy cell service.
I can only assume that you have never been to the western U. S. or anywhere at all in Canada much north of the 49th parallel. It can be quite barren, and even if one had a need to stick a cell tower in the North Cascades mountains, it won't cover everything. Hell, I go trail running on local mountains (Cougar/Squak/Tiger, for Seattle locals) that are within visual distance of a decent-sized city, and there are still spots where I don't get cell coverage (and all of those mountains have cell towers on top). Snap a bone or otherwise become immobile in the wrong spot, and you won't be calling anyone despite the fact that it's a ten minute drive to town. And those trails are full of day hikers on the weekends, many of which I'd guess aren't prepared to spend the night if they had to.
If you go hiking or heli-skiing...
I'd bet a paycheck that Apple's use cases did not include those that jump out of a helicopter to go skiing. Those folks, if they have any sense, have a dedicated device, as you state. I'm picturing this being for those like above, who just wanted a casual Saturday hike and something went wrong.
>Those folks, if they have any sense, have a dedicated device, as you state.
You'd be shocked at the number of people who carry their beacon, probe, shovel, etc but not an InReach or Spot device. With that said, most groups have at least one and are playing the odds game that it won't be them that has an issue and can't access it.
There's probably a difference between one-time purchases and committing to a subscription service (on a device that is also more expensive). If I did a lot of remote solo hiking, I'd probably feel I needed to spring for it, but I haven't as things stand.
Several hundred? It is less than $200 which is cheaper than upgrading to the iPhone 15k - that's all I'm saying. In no world is the device more expensive than an iPhone.
I go on tons of casual-mid level hikes near a major Canadian city. It’s incredibly frequent to have areas with clear sky visibility and no cell service.
Then remember this map is being extremely generous at the fringes of the coverage areas. Some areas will make a huge difference which side of a hill you're on, but this coverage map will show it as covered.
Here in Alaska, once you get outside the Anchorage bowl, you might get reception in each small town or village, and maybe a km or two outside. That's it.
From your name I suspect you may be German (if you are Austrian or Swiss, the following still applies, only more so).
Alaska alone is nearly 5 times the size of Germany, with less than 1% of the population.
That moment when a European finally begins to understand just how big North America is. I'm surprised it still happens on HN, but it's so fundamental to many of the discussions here. There's always someone saying "why does America suck so much" while thinking themselves so smart, as if there aren't good engineers across the globe. There's usually a good reason things are the way they are, and it's not that you're the only smart person in the world.
Yesterday I had a cust. come into the store with a iPhone 14 pro that was stuck in SOS mode. My tech couldn't resolve the issue with a restore in AC2. I wonder if this is related or just a coincidence.
Really impressed how Apple is leaning into unregulated “safety” features. Fall detection for grandma, crash detection for drivers, now this for adventurers. When you’re doing as well as Apple is, small reasons for consumers to buy keep adding up over the competition.
If this becomes available in Australia, it would be a decent reason for me to upgrade my phone. I quite like bushwalking, and I quite like the idea of more adventurous walks – and knowing I can text for help would be a real plus.
> Emergency SOS via satellite is available in the US and Canada starting today, November 15, and will come to France, Germany, Ireland, and the UK in December.
I take this to mean the service itself only works within the stated countries. I wonder if it would work in overseas US territories like Samoa.
Integrating with local SAR services is one issue, but Globalstar's coverage is another (contrary to its name, it's not actually global, since it requires satellites to have both mobile devices and at least one earth station in view at all times).
1 whole watt is a lot by modern, digital standards, but satellite does not have a directional antenna with gain to receive your signal.
It looks like Garmin InReach transmits at 1.6Watts. I wonder what the radio is inside the new iPhones.
When you're going straight up you don't have to deal with obstructions and the curvature of the earth.
For OP if you want to see it in action there are plenty of YouTube videos[0] of amateur radio operators with an HT (walkie-talkie) contacting astronauts on the ISS - which is 254 miles up.
iPhone satellite SOS communicates to a constellation of 24 GlobalStar Gen 2 Low Earth Orbit satellites, orbiting somewhere between 800 and 1000mi[0]. This is the same satellite system that SPOT messengers talk to (which are also tiny devices)[1].
The user points the phone at the satellite (in reality, the UI tells the user where to put the phone in relation to it's measured antenna pattern to maximize the gain towards the nearest satellite), while the satellite has a huge, very very high gain antenna array to pick up the signal and pass it back down to a ground station. iPhones can output up to 2 watts of RF power, which is enough for a tiny <HELP! Here's my LAT/LON & status> message. It's using 5G NR band 53 [2][3]
I'm sure someone out there has already run a linkbudget and posted it to their blog, but I haven't found it yet.
> The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Which kind of implies it will be a pay for service after two years.
If I were the product manager there, I would fight tooth and nail to only make a short term commitment to support it at all. Two years in, if it's un unmitigated disaster costing $1B/year and generating zero rescues and zero PR, kill it. You can't do that if you've promised "free for the life of the phone" or something.
They could just let you use it and charge you a one-time fee.
And don't require the payment to go through before unlocking the feature, obviously. There will be some people who you can never collect payment from, but not that many.
Well, the alternative is that other phones don't have it.
So I think this is an advantage. If, lets say, it costs 4.99 a year, I think a good percentage of people would do that (me included, even though I'm not an iPhone user).
$5 a year would feel miserly. A feature like this should be free or reasonably expensive. If you can do it for free, it is a benefit of belonging to the top tier phone club. If you charge a bit you sell it as a lifestyle choice: "I go places, but I don't need to buy a separate PLB".
This seems more like a legal CYA type of clause to me. I'd be surprised if emergency SOS ever becomes paid, given the reputational risk ("lost hiker dies of exposure after being unable to call SAR due to their credit card declining Apple's charge a day into their hike").
Much more likely they'll just add P2P messaging as a paid feature.
Set backcountry search and rescue aside for a second.
Seems to me this is for ordinary people doing ordinary things outside cell range, and finding they need help. A family member has a heart attack. A collision with a moose. Who knows what.
Less “should’ve brought water and a jacket” and more “we’ve been on route 9 for two hours, a moment ago everything was fine, now he’s not breathing, we have no bars, and we have no idea where the nearest hospital is.”
Besides, even if this feature only saves a single life, seems worth it to me.
> Besides, even if this feature only saves a single life, seems worth it to me.
Not that I think it will only save a single life, but if that really were the full extent of its benefit that of course it wouldn't be worth it - think of the millions Apple have spent on R&D plus the (presumably tiny but it adds up when selling millions of devices) extra cost per device - there are many ways that money could have been spent as a PR move by Apple to save thousands if not millions of lives.
That doesn't seem relevant to the question of whether it's worth spending a huge amount of money on saving a single life?
When I talked about spending money as a PR move I meant non-product related, the way companies donate to charities, or do charitable research, or hell they could've even invested in for-profit health startups that would have a higher expectation than saving a single life.
Apple is a profit-seeking company that builds tech products.
Building products that saves lives will increase sales, because people want to be safe, thus increasing profits.
How does donating to charity increase profits? It doesn't, so why would Apple spend money there?
Apple is not in the business of saving lives, they're in the business of building tech products. If those tech products can also save lives, that's the most life-saving we can expect from a profit-seeking company that builds tech products.
I don't understand why you're expecting Apple to save lives at a loss.
> I don't understand why you're expecting Apple to save lives at a loss.
I wasn't saying that at all, and I think if you reread both my comments and the context of the thread you'll see that.
I was replying specifically to the claim that if it would save a single life it would have been worth Apple doing. And if it were only to save a single life, Apple would have wasted a huge amount of money on that single life, when they could have redirected it towards other ways to waste their money but saving more lives.
I was purely pointing out that nobody should think it worth it "if it just saved one life". Not arguing for how Apple should spend money in other areas, just discussing in the context of if Apple were spending money on saving lives.
But... while you ask - it's actually very common for companies, big and small, to spend money on charities, usually because they think the public image benefit outweighs the cost. Apple DO spend money on, for example, donating money to HIV charities through their PRODUCT(RED) scheme. https://www.apple.com/uk/product-red/
And they spent money on this new feature being discussed in this thread (I assume because they expect it to save more than a single life!).
So when I ride the bus or train, I'm allowed to use my phone? What about when I use an uber (or lift or any of the many many other local alternatives)?
Not everyone that moves at driving speeds is driving, especially in places outside of America.
It would also cost lives. In a serious emergency you can start driving someone to the hospital and call 911. In rural areas when ambulances can take 45+ minutes being unable to call and drive can be a big issue.
That’s just one of many edge cases where disabling cellphone service for moving callers is downright dangerous.
This is definitely not an extremely serious backcountry device, but for someone (like me) that is a casual hiker and skier, it was the primary reason I bought an iPhone 14 Pro.
It's very easy in the US West to get out of cell service very quickly - at that point, even just throwing an ankle or tripping can put you at the mercy of your hiking companion or random strangers on the trail. If you're going somewhere less traveled, this is just a nice thing to have in your pocket.
This feature isn't going to save you after you've been buried in an avalanche, but it's going to get search and rescue to carry you out when you're 10 miles from the parking lot. Worth the cost.
I own a PLB, and I don't bring it on every hike with the dog or walk in the woods. I will always have my iPhone though, I think this feature is amazing for the broad coverage and you have it on your iPhone 14 (and later) by default, attempt to call 911 and if you don't have service it's going to walk you through it. I've loaned my PLB to family members, and there was a lengthy instruction period about how to use it. This comes with none of that baggage, it's easy to use and you already have it in your pocket.
Yeah. I mean there are large swaths of New England where there isn't any cell service at all, let alone multi-carrier coverage. And these aren't just logging roads or whatever, they are paved roads that people commute and travel on every day. This is an unalloyed good for anyone anywhere in areas like this.
On the rare times when I take the commuter rail into Boston from the west, there's one section around Concord and Lincoln (expensive suburbs--wouldn't shock me if locals opposed additional cell phone towers) where my connection always drops.
My wife and I frequently drive through Michigan's upper peninsula. Weather can be extremely rough in the winter time with many spots of poor/no service.
While we hope to never use it, we think this feature is a game changer for rural travel.
This reminds me of the unfortunate death of CNET reporter, James Kim in 2006.
Kim and his family were stranded on a rural route traveling from Portland to San Francisco. He went out in search of help and succumbed to hypothermia.
It was unusual, however there are "backcountry" incidents that don't necessarily involve intentionally setting out into remote areas.
I suspect, being a tech reporter, Kim would have had a satellite SOS enabled smartphone if it had been on the market.
>Satellites move rapidly, have low bandwidth, and are located thousands of miles away from Earth, so it can take a few minutes for even short messages to get through.
Low orbit satellites can be about 500 kilometers / 300 miles so would be the logical next step?
I was just on the ground coordinating with 4 friends that got buried in 5+ foot of unexpected snow in the mountains (forecast said 1"-2" when they went up) for the rifle opener in Montana. I wound up getting sick so I stayed home (hilariously I was the only one who got an elk) but I sent them up with my InReach.
All I can say is THANK GOD that I did, because it turned into over a week long effort to get them out. Two decided to walk out and were able to text me a nav point that I was able to meet them at (took all day to get there because of the snow and mud, but I made it and was able to pick them up). The other two stayed up there, and we sent probably 100 texts back and forth coordinating what turned into like 3 solid days of fighting to get up there with snowcats and get them back down. Multiple situational changes that we would have been hosed without.
In the end, I spent like $80 on texts, but it was money well spent. I think it's great for people to have SOS built into their iPhone, but there needs to be a "use it now, pay later" or no one is going to activate it and actually have it available when they need it. The other half of the equation is that you really need to be able to send texts. The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive. That will keep a lot of people from using it. (Yes insurance exists, but hardly anyone has it). Being able to text your friends for help is substantially more useful. Being stuck on a backroad with no service, 5, 10, 20 miles from where anyone can be expected to drive by is a far more common scenario than breaking your leg at the top of a mountain and needing to be evacuated.
For Emergency services there is no “activate and pay later” because you don’t need to activate, and you don’t need to pay. If you have an iPhone 14 it’s supposed to just work if you’re calling 911.
> For Emergency services there is no “activate and pay later” because you don’t need to activate, and you don’t need to pay. If you have an iPhone 14 it’s supposed to just work if you’re calling 911.
This is nothing special about the iPhone or the version; every cell phone is supposed to put through calls to 911:
> All wireless phones, even those that are not subscribed to or supported by a specific carrier, can call 911.
> For Emergency services there is no “activate and pay later” because you don’t need to activate, and you don’t need to pay. If you have an iPhone 14 it’s supposed to just work if you’re calling 911.
The Emergency SOS seems explicitly to require activation, and to have a cost (eventually):
> The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.4
So I assumed that the parent was referring to just calling 911 using the normal cell network, which can indeed be done, on any mobile phone (that is able to dial, of course), without activation or payment.
It doesn’t require “activation, ” you try to call 911 and when you don’t have signal, the phone sends an emergency text message to the satellite network.
Seems like we’ll find out in a year or two no? No one knows right now but I’m not going to bag on a service that will save lives on the maybe chance that 2 years from now it might cost something but we don’t know what.
Activation here refers to the activation of the phone itself, not the satellite service specifically. A new phone needs to be activated (registering it with Apple and maybe your carrier) before you can use it at all.
The “use and pay later” scheme refers to an emergency system that is pay-per-use or requires an ongoing payment (e.g. subscription); the idea would be that if you use the feature at all it works immediately but will charge you for that sometime later (kinda like how an ambulance will pick you up right away but bill you for the privilege later).
>If you have an iPhone 14 it’s supposed to just work if you’re calling 911.
Did you mean to say "work AS if you're calling 911"? The emergency message via satellite function has to be explicitly used instead of just calling 911
To the average user, they will try to dial 911, the iPhone won’t be able to complete a cellular 911 call and will then present the user with the UI for sending an emergency message to first responders. I don’t really see the need for distinction, except between an iPhone 14 and a 13, or an android, which would fail to make the 911 call and that’s it.
> The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive.
With my inReach I pay for the insurance plan [1]. I do wilderness float/canoe/kayak trips and I have it for peace of mind in case I or somebody I'm with (or encounter) is immobilized, as I can walk out of most places I go to if my legs are working.
I haven't been able to find any such option for the iPhone, which, amongst other things, means I'll be keeping my inReach. Though to be clear I don't know to what degree I would be on the hook for anything if I _did_ hit the SOS button.
I encourage people to know the laws in the state they are exploring as they are different across the board - some are at no cost to the individual while others have clauses.
Additionally, know how your device works - end to end - regardless of what it is. You gain a lot of knowledge and life saving techniques by knowing the process that is kicked off, it's timeframe, etc.
Alternatively, you can spend about $200 one time on a personal locator beacon that requires no ongoing costs. It can't do two-way communication but activating it sends out a specific frequency picked up by satellites and is the equivalent of calling 911. Rescuers will come to help you.
All serious hikers and outdoor adventurers should carry a personal locator beacon.
Any personal locator beacon recommendations? It's one of those items that I could very much use during bike touring, hiking, and bikepacking... but I've never bought one because it seems like a very large cost for something I won't even test until it is a matter of life and death.
Out of curiosity... is there any way to alert your local emergency department in advance of testing a beacon, so you can verify that it works?
These devices require a new battery every few years and that service includes a test done by the manufacturer. There is also a self test button on the device which does not send a message to the satellites.
If you really feel the need to send test messages into space, they do support that but then you need a subscription (https://www.acrartex.com/406link/). At that point you may as well buy a different device which has 2 way messaging included in the subscription. PLB users generally do trust that their devices work the first time they're used for real, and this trust is backed up by a lot of real world use.
>PLB users generally do trust that their devices work the first time they're used for real, and this trust is backed up by a lot of real world use.
Although they are not foolproof. See for example the story of Kate Matrosova. [1] Basically, mountain shadows made the location readings erratic which, in combination with extremely bad weather, meant rescuers couldn't find her.
PLBs are tested down to -40° so it might have stayed working for longer as the weather got worse. It is of course impossible to say if Kate might have survived under other circumstances except that (not very interestingly) if she's decided the weather was too awful and aborted she'd almost certainly live.
It's been a while since I read the book on this. I'm not sure if it got into the exact equipment or not. Certainly if SAR had an accurate fix from the beginning there would have been at least some hope for a rescue.
The book was interesting mostly for all the SAR detail. The accident, sadly, was mostly in the category of--however fit and well-equipped you are--don't try to beat a very bad incoming storm on an exposed ridge line in the middle of winter. If she had turned around at Madison Hut or wherever she'd have been fine.
I only meant that the devices, if properly maintained, can be trusted to do their job as best they can and not say "PC LOAD LETTER" and expect you to troubleshoot it. A successful rescue is never guaranteed.
Those of us who are programmers usually default to "If it's not tested end to end, it won't work," and that is the sentiment I was responding to.
The person in that article was using SPOT, not a PLB.
Actual PLBs (not SPOT) have a backup strategy in the event the GPS signal is obscured by mountains.
If the device can't get a reliable GPS fix, the satellites will resort to measuring doppler shift as they pass overhead to locate the transmitter. It's slower (takes several passes of the satellite, so we're talking hours) and less accurate, but it will get rescuers to the general direction.
From there, PLB devices also transmit a low-power homing signal on 121.5 MHz (the aviation distress frequency) that SAR teams can locate using radio direction-finding equipment.
Thanks for the info. Although, in general, I assume a device that allows you to have two-way communications with SAR is preferable even if a PLB might have been better in this ultimately fatal situation.
Yes, two-way communication is a huge benefit since you can explain the problem and the responders can give advice in addition to ETAs.
However, a device like the Garmin inReach requires an active subscription for the SOS to work. If there's a glitch with your credit card and the service becomes inactive while you're on travels, it might not work.
Another difference is that an inReach SOS message goes to the Garmin-run https://www.iercc.com/en-US/about/ rescue coordination center who will the relay to rescue services.
Whereas a PLB or EPIRB communicate with the Cospas-Sarsat system and is handled directly by government rescue agencies (https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/mission-control-center). While the Garmin service works great, I have more trust in the USMCC being always responsive than any private company.
So the best advise is to have both. I have an EPIRB (for boating) and a couple PLBs in addition the the Garmin inReach. I use the inReach for casual messaging but if I ever have a real emergency I'll activate the PLB and EPIRB first and only afterwards start trying to message via the Garmin.
My understanding is that SARSAT is the only option that has satellites in orbits above LEO, and thus generally better coverage. So if it's down to one thing only, I'd pick the PLB just on the basis that, in a serious emergency, it's more important for help to come at all.
For PLB I am pretty sure it's universal. For messengers (like the inreach), find out what people in your geo use between iridium or SPOT because satellite coverage can vary. For example, I have heard that in alaska SPOT's only geostationary sat is really low on the southern horizon and anything that breaks LOS will interfere with the device.
For PLB specifically you cannot test them. Once you activate them, they continually broadcast and cannot be canceled except by destroying the device. For messengers, they hook up to a web service and you can send messages to personal email or SMS via the sat network as your test.
> I have heard that in alaska SPOT's only geostationary sat is really low on the southern horizon and anything that breaks LOS will interfere with the device.
Any geostationary sat would be low on the southern horizon in Alaska. That's just how geostationary orbits work, they are over the equator. Though pretty high above (35.000km/22.000mi). So it's still visible there but yeah you need a clear view of the southern horizon.
But Globalstar which runs the service for SPOT only has low earth orbit sats which are definitely not geostationary. They're only at a few hundred kilometers.
However it could very well be that their orbits are aligned so that they are always pretty low to the south from Alaska, yes.
> Each device has a test mode that will communicate with the SARSAT satellite network without sending an alert.
That explanation is factually incorrect, then. There currently is no "test" flag, nor is there the required infrastructure to check if your test alert went through:
Possibly (the page I linked even mentions a "test" type of signal), but given that there is no return link for most PLBs and no "list of recent successfully received test transmissions" online, I don't understand how one would actually verify success.
This policy document mentions that the "self-test" feature actually does not communicate with satellites at all, and also mentions a "test frame" that is discarded by satellites, as well as a "test protocol" that is forwarded by satellites, but discarded by the ground segment:
https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/POL-MCC-051-v...
So it seems like both the "self-test" and the "test frame" don't tell you a lot about how well your beacon would work in case of an actual emergency (unless you have equipment that can receive and interpret that signal), and live testing involves a lot of paperwork.
Yeah, the cheapest plan is $14.95/mo ($11.95/mo if you pay for 12 months) and includes 10 "free" text's, $0.50/text after that.
I wish they had a non-cost plan (or maybe $10/year) plus $5/text or something like that for use in an emergency. I have an InReach, but haven't used it for an emergency (yet), I've sent a few texts to friends/family while outside of cellular coverage since they are "free", but would rather save money and only pay if I need to use it in an emergency situation.
Maybe they'll have to get more flexible with their plans now that the iPhone has this feature, and T-Mobile is reportedly coming out with Satellite connectivity for phones.
> I wish they had a non-cost plan (or maybe $10/year) plus $5/text or something like that for use in an emergency.
Given that the outdoor SAR use case is probably the largest reason for people to get one of these devices in the first place, I doubt that such a model would be economically sustainable (unless subsidized by government agencies or possibly insurances saving money due to spending less on large-scale search operations).
Vendors could also bake a free SAR plan into the initial sales price, I suppose.
Yeah, if we conservatively say 1% of InReach users will need to send an SOS message, then looking at the math:
Today, 100 InReach subscribers nets Garmin around $144/yr * 100 people = $14,400
If the InReach were free except for when activating the SOS, the SOS would have to cost $14,000 to make that same revenue from the same number of users. This would surely lead to more deaths due to folks waiting way longer to send an SOS.
Numbers are estimates but the order of magnitude shouldn't be too far off.
They're going to lose the people like me anyway when phones can send a SOS by satellite, so their revenue from me will either go to $0 and I'll sell my InReach on eBay, or they can get some small amount of revenue (enough to cover the administrative costs of registering the device) from me.
Good point – now that the iPhone has satellite SOS, the market has changed, and the pure SOS use case has become a lot less compelling.
Some users still prefer a standalone device, want P2P messaging functionality (until Apple adds that, too), or need coverage beyond Globalstar – I'd be curious to see how much of the market that is, in the end.
I like the way Fi does it, where service can be paused for 90 days at a time. Just used it on vacation recently after having it paused for a couple years and it was seamless. I think I'll end up paying around $30 for the trip. It's a nice balance imo
The $15 a month for the Garmin in reach is a month to month plan. You can get it for a single trip then let it expire for years before getting another month for your next trip. If you buy a 1 year subscription it ends up going down to $12/month so if you're using it >=10 months a year, it's cheaper to commit to that but for most people, month to month where you can pause whenever you aren't using it is a good option.
My problem is I don't really have an off-season, nearly all year round I go on at least one hike a month that's outside of cell coverage (not too hard around here), which is why I got the InReach in the first place.
It's not expensive when it's compared to the alternative of not being able to call for help when there's no cell coverage.
But it's expensive if it's compared to $0 for a feature that's already built into my phone. (though it remains to see how long Apple keeps it free since they only say it's "free for 2 years")
For me it's the best $15/mo I spend. As someone who is regularly alone in the backcountry far from cell service, it's massively nice to know that I can communicate something wrong or if simply running late. And my wife also has to worry far less knowing that I can let her know if something goes wrong. She also has the ability to request my location without me doing anything in the event I were unconscious or something.
InReach, and any users (other brands offering competing two-way communicators) of the Iridium satellite network, have ongoing fees. They're rather small compared to someone dying in the wilderness.
PLBs are great and definitely better than not carrying any emergency communications device at all, but they can ultimately only send out a binary signal: "I need help at location x/y".
There's a lot of situations in which I'd appreciate being able to call help without possibly triggering an expensive helicopter SAR operation, when sending a park ranger would be more than sufficient (e.g. a sprained ankle a mile off the trailhead when solo hiking).
Another advantage of two-way communicators is being able to get instructions from the SAR team: It can be vital to know whether you should e.g. go to higher ground (because your signal has not been received yet) or conversely seek shelter from the elements for a couple of hours. Newer PLBs partially solve that problem though, thanks to Galileo's "blue light" return channel.
So far 100% of my inreach use is texting family, I bought it for emergencies but so far (luckily) haven't needed it for that. I'm confident that it will work well enough in that situation that I don't need a PLB.
It does, I have the fancier inReach - the one that can make calls and texts without being tethered to an iphone. The service runs $15 a month for the basic service and scales up depending on how many texts a month you want to use. I wouldn't ditch it for an iphone 14 as it is way more rugged and in really cold climates(I live near the mountains) a iphone will rapidly discharge its battery and will be useless.
I finally broke down and got my inreach as I was exploring a canyon way out in the desert and a rockslide almost took out my ankle. I told my Wife when I got back and she made me get one as I most likely would have been in serious trouble as cell signal was not working and nobody was in miles of me.
you are correct, inReach devices can text by themselves(with no cell signal) and can be paired with a cell phone to make calls(I have the 66i), but not make calls by themselves.
I think I didn't write that clear enough :) I haven't used mine like this so far.. but you can pair the garmin to a phone(via the connect app) and make a call from the phone using the garmin as an antenna so to speak, you cannot talk or hear anything on it(the garmin inReach).
The Garmin inReach cannot make phone calls in any way or configuration.
It can send & receive text messages either by itself (that's a pain since you have to select letters one by one with arrow keys, but it works) or paired to a supported external device like a tablet.
Actually, I'm not sure this is good advice. Two-way commiunicators are vastly preferred by Search and Rescue organizations.
The reason for this is that they can learn about what they need to do and who they need to send to you, because they can ask you.
If you have a broken leg, they'll send in 10 people to get you out. Dehydrated? Two responders and water.
Calls that come in from "dumb" communicators like PLBs are more likely to get a 1-2 person "hasty" team assigned to them who can arrive quickly then call in more reinforcements if necessary. A SAR org. isn't going to put 10 volunteers on a PLB call that ends up being a rolled ankle, at least not immediately.
This has the potential to greatly delay the time to care for you, especially for more severe emergencies.
SAR people may largely be volunteers, but helicopters have fairly expensive operational costs. In time-sensitive situations, it is better to have two way communications (because it keeps SAR as inexpensive as possible). See my sister comment for my wife's experience.
In our case, our org (Norwegian Red Cross) buy the equipment using sponsor money and the like. Then we get reimbursed by the government for using them in SAR operations.
It works well enough for us to have maybe 4 snowmobiles, 2 6-wheel ATV's, a 4 person rope rescue kit, 10 TETRA phones and a car in addition to various medical equipment.
My wife has an InReach. While hiking in Colorado, she encountered a woman who started going into shock (for no obvious reason!). Because of the satellite-based texting, SAR determined that Medivac chopper was more appropriate than land based rescue. Doctors said that the woman had 1-2 hours before death / permanent injury, so the most likely outcome of only having an emergency beacon would have been her death.
You buy the hardware, pay a $30 activation fee, and a then pay monthly for the service.
There are several service plans ranging from $15 a month to $65 a month. The cheap plan comes with 10 texts a month and the $65 a month plan has unlimited texting.
If you pay an additional $35 annual fee, you can suspend the plan during months you would not use it.
I'd be surprised if Apple does not launch this as a paid feature sooner rather than later (possibly as a perk part of Apple One or one of their other subscription plans).
First off, super glad to hear your friends are out of the field safe.
Want to address one point however: "The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive"
In my experience on multiple SAR teams (Search and Rescue), this is almost never the case in North America.
Search and Rescue is one of the few services that is almost uniformly free [1]. Thousands and thousands of volunteer hours every year keep it that way.
In fact, the two most prominent professional organizations for SAR (NASAR [2] & MRA [3]) both have longstanding policies that teams should not
charge for rescue. On a personal level, I can tell you that the majority of the rescues/recoveries I have worked in the last decade would have been
easier or led to a better outcome if the subject had called earlier. Embarrassment and fear of cost are the two primary reasons I have had subjects
quote as the reasons they delayed calling for rescue, even after they knew self-rescue would not be possible. When you realize self-rescue isn't possible,
call us early.
While this is great to know, the SOS button is still fundamentally potentially a completely open-ended liability if you haven't taken Garmin's 30 buck annual insurance option for it. Even with that, you are only capped at $50k to best of my knowledge. Your Utah example illustrates this.
In a real SOS situation the cost is likely immaterial, but I can absolutely understand why people would wait a bit longer than they should before pressing.
Having two-way communications would help tremendously, because then you can say "well, pressing the button will cost $100, but the person on the other end will know if I need rescue now or later".
> the SOS button is still fundamentally potentially a completely open-ended liability if you haven't taken Garmin's 30 buck annual insurance option for it.
Not in Canada. SAR is completely free in Canada for the reason you've basically alluded to in your next paragraph.
> but I can absolutely understand why people would wait a bit longer than they should before pressing.
I've been to a number of presentations from the local SAR, and whenever they're asked about this, they say that the reason SAR has no cost is precisely because they never want people to hesitate before pressing the button or making the call.
The next couple years will give us more concrete numbers, but based on my personal experience, I doubt this will change call volume significantly. We're mostly seeing dramatically increased call volume due to more people being involved in backcountry recreation and less so due to increased comms coverage through cell or satellite devices.
While there is the argument that these devices give increased peace of mind that the backcountry is somehow "safer", I don't know that I've seen this cause an uptick in callouts for our team. Subjects needing rescue are still usually hesitant to call for rescue and usually try to self extricate, even when they should likely initiate a rescue. Most of our call-outs happen at night for this reason.
That said, the upside of these devices is significant - especially in the area of improving our response time and reducing total callout time. The advent of the E911 Phase 2 (including location in 911 calls) has made the majority of our call-outs dramatically simpler & faster. What was formerly a multi-step process which might involve something like deploying multiple hasty teams to sweep large areas; determining subject location; deploying specialized resources for extraction -- can now jump straight to deploying a single hasty team for medical while simultaneously deploying specialized resources given that the terrain & access is known via the subject's location.
Edit: I can't edit my above comment, but just got confirmation from a friend both Grand and Wayne have revised their rescue policy and now only charge in exceptional circumstances - https://www.grandcountyutah.net/734/Donate-to-GCSAR
> Subjects needing rescue are still usually hesitant to call for rescue and usually try to self extricate
Someone with the knowledge and foresight to bring along a Garmin or PLB or something probably has a decent understanding of what it means to use it - waking people up and deploying expensive assets - and because of that I can see why they'd probably hesitate (it surely would trigger my "I don't want to be a bother" instinct).
I hope once every iPhone user has the same capability that it doesn't become an "eternal September"-like moment and flip too far the other way into overly casual use.
Regardless, you're much closer to the situation than I am so I'll defer to your expertise. Clearly, more communications in an emergency is always going to be better, so I look forward to seeing stories about how this new feature saves lives.
And thanks for your efforts in providing rescue services to the people who need them!
That decision making process is a key part of what's taught in a wilderness medicine course: assessing the situation at hand and deciding whether it's necessary to evacuate for a higher level of care, and if so, whether you need a rapid evac like a helicopter, or can walk or be carried out with fewer resources. https://blog.nols.edu/2018/02/20/stay-or-go-infographic
I do tend to agree that this has a pretty good chance of creating more nuisance calls from people who are not in actual danger...I read the New York forest rangers reports now and then, and a big portion of the rescues involve clueless people who set off alone with no map, an hour before sunset in October wearing a tshirt and shorts.
At least those people probably need to be rescued. The more annoying examples are people who are not lost or in danger, but just decided they were tired and did not want to walk back out.
From my chats with friends who do SAR, they'd much prefer you use it more casually if its the two way communication kind. SAR volunteers really are a special breed, they're already volunteering to risk their lives to save you and most days don't have incident, so text messages back and forth with the potential for rescue is a bit exciting.
Like, the moment you're sufficiently sure you might be lost or at risk/danger. Then at least they know you're out there and where to start looking from your last known location even if you don't need help yet. They might also be able to trivially guide you for self-rescue instead of the situation escalating into requiring rescue or becoming a much more complex rescue.
But if it's just a simply SOS device, then, well, yeah, it can become a nuisance because that can mean "I'm a bit lost" or "I'm quickly dying" and anything in-between and they have no way of knowing.
> We're mostly seeing dramatically increased call volume due to more people being involved in backcountry recreation and less so due to increased comms coverage through cell or satellite devices.
I wonder if part of the reason more people are involved in backcountry recreation is due to it not feeling as dangerous as it used to because people figure (rightly or wrongly) they can always get help from my phone.
Anyway, I agree with your reasoning that it's important that backcountry rescue be free, becuase of people not calling as early as they should because of worry of cost, and resulting injury, death, or just more complicated rescue... but even though you're assuring me of it, I'm still not sure it's true! I feel like I hear stories all the time (which googling seems to confirm?) of people being charged when someone determines they deserved it or something, depending on who ends up responding... which would make me reluctant to SOS too. I believe you the outfits you work with never charge, but when I'm in an emergency or possible-emergency, I have no way of knowing if it's going to end up being that situation or not... which is a problem.
i doubt it, most new folk getting into it rarely think about what happens if it goes sideways and are totally ignorant of the dangers. i usually have to be "buy an inreach please or at the very least let people know where you are going"
mostly its just made it safer because you now can call for help isntead of having to hike out
Out of curiosity, do you find it at all useful when people who call in SAR have some kind of handheld radio transceiver? (I'm lumping everything here - FRS/GMRS, MURS, ham sets etc).
I've seen stats that showed a significant increase in the number of callouts without major injuries in a period around 20 years ago, which correlated with mobile phones becoming popular. Suddenly it was easy for someone to call rescue services when they're stuck, where previously they would have had to make a plan. And maybe it also increased the number of people going out into the mountains now that they had an easy way to call for help.
But overall, the rescue services managed easily. The growth was slow enough over a couple of years, that it's easy enough to scale up the number of volunteers as needed. In my experience, when you get more callouts, more people are eager to volunteer. No-one wants to spend regular time doing training when there aren't any callouts.
As someone with a bunch of idiotic friends that always find themselves needing SAR in North America. The rule of thumb within the group that has generally held true is: if you're on federal lands it's fully free, but if you're in resort, city, or state jurisdiction they'll absolutely try to claw back the costs.
The SAR might be technically "free", but they'll categorize as many things under "medical emergency" as possible and throw the book of fines at you.
In one instance, yes, for simply getting so lost in the mountains in a state park that they decided it was best to call SAR when provisions ran out after dark. Dispatch routed the rescue request to the closest city fire department, they came out with a helicopter. City then left them with the bill for the helicopter (which was covered by health insurance as medical transport minus the deductible), and fines for trespassing (they weren't supposed go off marked trails) and staying in the park after closing/dark.
Oh, SAR will "creatively adjust" the incident report when people have health insurance, so that they can bill them for a medical emergency and have their insurance cover it? Sounds like fraud.
SAR doesn't care about whether you have insurance. They simply stick you with a bill if they think you were negligent or the situation shouldn't have happened if there was adequate preparation and/or skill.
Then you, the rescued, file a claim with whatever insurance you think is appropriate and make your case. Maybe insurance investigates and looks up the SAR incident report, maybe they don't. Either way SAR isn't part of any alleged insurance fraud.
> The SAR might be technically "free", but they'll categorize as many things under "medical emergency" as possible and throw the book of fines at you.
And then seemed to imply that's what they did when someone just got lost. Okay they will do it regardless if you have insurance or not, still fraud isn't it?
There's generally a medical component to SAR. If you don't need medical attention or weren't at risk of needing medical attention, what's the rush?
Search is trivial if you're calling in help yourself since just about any device that can call for help will communicate where you are. Gets more complicated for a wide area search called in by someone else though, because that is expensive; but then the target's medical condition is unknown and likely assumed to be for the worst.
If you're completely healthy but in need of rescue eventually, they'll dispatch some better equipped volunteers to retrace your steps and rescue you out of whatever situation you're in.
One time our rope caught on something after we released it, so we couldn't ascend to unstick it, but couldn't descend further without the rope. That would've been a SAR call if there wasn't another group above us that could partially descend on their rope and unstick our rope for us. But it would've been a trivial rescue since we could've reasonably survived stuck on the shaded alcove for a couple days until we got another rope. A ranger or volunteer would've been dispatched to unstick the rope or with their own for us to use, not a helicopter to extract us out.
It's when there's an immediate risk to life, that's what causes urgency, which is the main driver for cost because then typically helicopters are involved. If they itemize by search, rescue, and medical, why wouldn't medical greatly dominate the costs?
> There's generally a medical component to SAR. If you don't need medical attention or weren't at risk of needing medical attention, what's the rush?
"At risk of needing medical attention", e.g., dying of thirst of exposure after a few days when you're lost, is not a medical emergency though. This isn't even some esoteric legalize it's just obvious common sense. You were talking about things like just getting lost, and SAR trying to file as much as they possibly can under "medical emergency". Definitely sounds like fraud.
Free as long as you didn't sign an agreement saying you'd be responsible for the cost of SAR. Such as breaking resort rules by going out of bounds[1].
It's really the same as the US (other than our states and cities acting more like corporations), it comes down to who gets dispatched: if it's the government you're fine, but oftentimes if you're near a resort, it comes down to whether dispatch thinks the resort staff, a government agency, or a volunteer group is better suited for the rescue. If it's the resort, you might've agreed to give them the legal right to claw back costs.
Your link doesn’t really support your claim. It was a “fine” from a private resort, that by their own account is entirely unenforceable[1]. Essentially a request for a donation to SAR.
In practise, SAR is free in Canada no matter where you are. There are hundreds and hundreds of SAR calls in BC per year, and not a single person rescued has been required to pay a cent. Many of them do make donations though as a token of thanks.
A friend's 18yo brother was motorcycling in the mountains with their father, crashed and broke his femur. Ambulance would have taken hours, they had helicopter rescue insurance, but the only helicopter company that operated there wouldn't take it. Got a $25k bill for the helicopter ride and negotiated down to $16k iirc.
Thanks for sharing. I'm relatively new to back country adventures (moved here from RI in 2018), and have heard from peers stories about bankrupting rescues. Glad to know that is not necessarily the case.
I can say I was completely out of my comfort zone when two tried to walk out, that turned into the most stressful day of our lives. I think everyone thought they were going to die: the two walking out from hypothermia, me from a bear that didn't want to leave me alone when I was on foot looking for them. It wound up taking them hours longer than expected to walk out, and I kept getting stuck looking for them, to the point I thought I was sleeping in my car that night (while they potentially froze to death) because I was like 12 miles from a main road, and had no cell signal, and hadn't found them yet. I'd much rather have called S&R!!
As a big-time hunter myself, I'm glad you got them all out. It sounds like the ones that stayed back were well prepared. Surprise snowfall is no joke and can catch out even the best mountaineers. Countless day hikers have lost their lives in smaller mountains like the Adirondacks in Upstate NY, let alone the big mountains in the Western US. Thankfully it's never happened to me, but I personally never venture into the mountains without the ability to survive for weeks if needed.
Well, I knew where their tent was, but when the two walked out, they sent me the spot to meet them, and left the InReach up top.
By the straightest path, they had about 5 miles to go. I had about 12 of bad road. I got there an hour late and thought I missed them. I spent another 2 hours looking for them before finally finding them (at dusk). I was actually about to leave and go call S&R. It turns out, the path path of least resistance turned into 10 miles, which is why it took so long. One had mild hypothermia when I found them.
Ultimately, I wouldn't have known they were trying to walk out unless they could text me. Location is super helpful, and I wish we had more than one InReach as a group, as I would have found them more easily.
Interesting observation: You prevented a "uh oh" from turning into an "we're dying" state. It sounds like your friends are pretty hardened for the backcountry, and they needed to get out, but it wasn't life-threatening (at the time). Something we should consider while designing these systems. I think the pricepoint of InReach services certainly prevent casual usage (sending memes, browsing instagram) but allows sufficient communication at a reasonable price to coordinate safely.
Also, with 5ft of snow coming down, I have my doubts an iPhone would be able to reach out and touch a satellite. It'll be interesting to see some tests.
No one is asking this but the rest i know about, so i find myself thinking "what on earth do you do with a rifle-shot-dead elk?", since I have no suburban-kid idea.
Leaving aside the option to take a side-by-side/ATV/snowmobile (with skid or trailer if needed) to solve the problem with horsepower, or the option of biological horses instead of petroleum horses:
1. You first field dress it - cut from sternum to tail and pull the entrails, leaving them in a pile in the woods for scavengers. That takes your elk from 700 lbs (you hope) to ~450 lbs.
2. Quarter it and hang the 4 ~100lbs quarters high in a tree safe from bears and wolves (but not cougars) and carry them out one at a time using a backpack with a frame and hip belt. Be sure to carry the prime cuts (backstraps) out with the first load. Watch for predators on the return trips.
3. It's becoming more common, too, to fully butcher the animal in the field, removing the bones, which reduces the load to haul down to about 200 lbs. The skin, ivory, and head (if you want those) add some weight.
A Jet Sled in 2" of snow makes it surprisingly easy to haul an awful lot of elk and gear. As long as you're going across flat ground or downhill, that is - uphill is no fun at all.
A whitetail here in Michigan is much easier, even a big one is only about 100 lbs after field dressing. You just lay it on a drag/tarp or in a sled (or, if you don't care about the skin staying pristine and aren't going over super rocky terrain, just tie a rope to the antlers and front legs) and drag it out.
In case this helps anyone else not from the US, a side-by-side is one of those bigger-than-a-quadbike vehicles. A buggy. Like Polaris, etc. I've seen loads on farms and trails and honestly never knew what they were called. Always assumed side-by-side was like a motorbike with a sidecar!
Great comment by LeifCarrotson pretty much explains it. I gutted and skinned it, removing each quarter, and the meat along the back, ribs, and neck. That took basically all day. I use a knife with a replaceable blade. The guts are held in by connective tissue near the spine. If the belly faces downhill when you open it, gravity starts to pull them out. I removed the lungs to get room to work (just indiscriminately slicing), and then reached up in the neck as high as possible, and cut the trachea and esophagus. Then I used a hatchet to cut through the pelvic bone, a sharp knife to basically excise the anus, and cut any remaining connective tissue from behind. Eventually, gravity did the rest.
The big goal is to not puncture intestines, as they are gross and contain bacteria that will spoil the meat.
To skin it, I started at a back leg, just making a cut, pulling the skin up, and seeing it's connected to muscle by very soft fat. You can pull on the skin, slice the fat, and the animal basically unwraps. You want to keep hair off the meat because again, bacteria.
Front quarters are easy as there's no bone joint. They pop off quckly. Rear are harder, you need to find and cut the ligament(?) that holds the leg in the hip.
Then, I put about half the elk on a children's sled, and pulled it (mercifully downhill or level) about 1.5 miles. Then, I went and got the other half. She was a cow, so no antlers to carry.
Then, I hung all the meat in a frienda garage for about 2 days, took it home in several coolers, and fought off my dog while every evening for 4 evenings, I separated the muscle groups, and/or chunked meat to grind (lower quality meat gets turned into hamburger or sausage), vacuum sealed eveything, and froze it.
I'm originally from Rhode Island, and this is only my third animal (first was a deer, then an antelope) so it was pretty overwhelming.
Why wouldn't it be? For that matter, is there any country that has enough natural areas for hunting to be viable, but bans it anyway? Developed countries usually have more stringent requirements wrt licensing, hunting seasons, equipment (e.g. no lead bullets in many places, caliber restrictions to ensure humane kills etc), and so on; and better enforcement of all that.
> there needs to be a "use it now, pay later" or no one is going to activate it and actually have it available when they need it
I've been solo hiking, running, kayaking, and biking in areas without cell service since before cell phones were things people carried.
Haven't needed emergency search-and-rescue in 20 years, so it's just never seemed like a good investment...that's $3600 I could have 'wasted' on a service I've never needed. But I would probably buy and carry an InReach if they offered use it now, pay later plans. I don't carry a PLB, because that would mean paying for insurance, and I'd more likely need a lift from my brother in a side-by-side than a helicopter from the sheriff's office (and the ruinous costs that would entail....
I plan to wear my Fenix 6 Pro for another 10 years, but if they came out with a version with InReach 2-way texts my wife would buy it RIGHT NOW, express shipping, not even a thought of waiting for Christmas.
On the other hand, that's $3600 of profit for Apple/Garmin/Iridium/Globalstar/Spot that they're loathe to leave on the table until the one time in 20 years when I really need it.
Depending on the location, perhaps getting your amateur radio license and a radio with APRS on it might help fill in some of the coverage gaps. I've heard (though cannot confirm personally) that there is often APRS coverage in remote areas that are otherwise not served by cellular.
It depends a lot on the terrain and specific area whether a typical VHF/UHF ham radio will work. The range is much longer than cellular, but it is quite LOS, and repeater/digipeater sites with good coverage tend to be at established antenna sites for commercical broadcast or telecom. There'll be some more remote sites of course, but infrastructure and LOS is still more or less required. With many popular recreation areas up in uninhabited mountain valleys with no infrastructure and where building stuff is often prohibited, the chances of hitting a site aren't great unless you happen to be below a mountain microwave site or such. At least without hiking out of the valley, but that's hardly a condition you want to put on yourself for an emergency communicator.
That said, it's not a bad thing to carry in your car, as there are plenty enough dead spots that would likely be covered by packet radio. It's just a lot less clear how to get help.
This. I’ve been wilderness backpacking for a long time and still carry a 2m radio just for fun, but the usefulness is limited in a lot of places. If you’re climbing up a mountain in NH you can pretty much hit a repeater from anywhere, but if you’re trekking around in Big Bend State Park in Texas you can forget it. Satellite communication is much better and if you can’t afford a few hundred bucks for some kind of satcom then you probably shouldn’t be going out too deep into some of these places.
>Haven't needed emergency search-and-rescue in 20 years, so it's just never seemed like a good investment
It's just $16 a month and there are other uses besides SOS; like texting to say you'll be late but everything is fine or that you've decided to stay another night. You can even get weather forecasts which is pretty huge if you ever do multi-day trips. Besides all that, carrying an InReach could one day save someone else's life.
The most important benefit it gives me (and my wife) is peace of mind. I find it worth every penny.
One more cool feature I just remembered - it can intermittently send your location to a website (optionally password protected) so someone can track your progress. If you fall and get knocked out you won't be able to send an SOS - but your location (and the last time you moved) will be known by loved ones.
If you're seriously going to go into the back country in the rural western US states and Canada, and you have a good paying professional job, there is no excuse, in my opinion, not to spend $1000 on a full capability Iridium handset and the $50/month service plan that goes with it. If you really NEED to use it you won't care that it costs $1.20 a minute to make a call.
I agree with your sentiment but I'd add that a full handset is overboard in many cases. An InReach mini (or similar) will work fine for many/most people
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] threadThis is new to me. I thought the feature was limited to US + Canada. Did they mention additional regions in the keynote?
In the US there's an explicit exception to life threatening emergencies that let you use basically any radio frequency I wonder how many countries have something like that that could at least allow them to enable the emergency contact portion of this without the check-in for non emergency situations.
https://www.catphones.com/en-ca/cat-s61-smartphone/
- thermal imaging - laser assisted distance measurement - indoor air quality
Definitely gonna keep those CAT phones in mind for the next time I need a new one.
Getting a smartphone and paying a recurring fee for data (when I was perfectly capable) was still a major point of hesitation for me.
Satellite-based communication devices remains as one of the self-imposed unobtaniums.
We haven't arrived at full tricorder yet though.
Generously, maybe someone did think of it, but it would have been too difficult to make a prop with a bright enough light source.
My flashlights have adjustable beams. They throw out many times more light than my phone's flashlight. Using the dedicated flashlight gives a way better lighting experience than using my phone's flashlight. But it is like cameras, the best flashlight is the one on you.
I can see the communicator on the chest being used as a flashlight with the powerful LED we have today.
But 90s TV show prop departments would probably have had one hell of a time trying to make that work, and practical, so instead they gave everybody futuristic looking flashlights aka "palm beacons" [0]
[0] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Palm_beacon
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/11/emergency-sos-via-sat...
So basically, they have their own infrastructure for their own proprietary 911 service with global coverage? It's really amazing that we live in a world where we can have such infrastructure, but at the same time, it's owned and controlled by a single corporation.
I notice there's multiple mentions of these satellites working with the "Find My" service, which keeps track of where a device is (in order to find it where it's lost). So I guess all this infrastructure also allows Apple to pinpoint down any user worldwide -- even if they're off-grid.
I think Apple added n53 as part of this deal at Globalstar's request. Globalstar is trying to lease their spectrum terrestrially for small cell networks and network capacity solutions for the carriers.
https://www.globalstar.com/Globalstar/media/Globalstar/Downl... (PDF warning) Here's a presentation with some details.
The "emission type" for the satellite service is 198KG1D and operates under FCC rule Part 25 (Satellite Communications). They run 400mW or so up on 1.6GHz L-band, and ~90mW downlink S-band.
https://fccid.io/L2V-PT3
A Spot Gen3 runs around 200mW on L-band only for both ways. There's a slightly different emissions type, but same satellites.
The ground stations had additional hardware added by Cobham to support Apple's use on L/S-band.
Well, they could do that in the past - GPS works (almost) everywhere. They'd just have to wait with sending the data back.
They’re not going to burn precious bandwidth on an always-active tracking thing.
I get this sentiment. Globalstar does have competitors at least. Iridium and Inmarsat offer comparable services though not as seamlessly integrated into a popular consumer device.
I do wonder what happens if you aren't paying for the service but have an emergency. I guess they just don't connect you at all? Is there an automatic charge for accessing it?
As for infrastructure I think Verizon is doing something similar with Starlink and there are multiple possible satellite constellations that could be connected too Apple is just the first to include what I think has to be a new radio or radio component.
And yes, the Apple announcement is just the productization of a feature in the Qualcomm X65[1]. But I think this is a case where the technical implementation is the easiest part; I would be surprised of other X65 adopters also delivered satellite comms, at least unless/until it's obvious it's driving phone purchasing decisions.
[0] https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove...
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/18/iphone-14-satellite-connectiv...
If Apple spends $450 million to enable the service [0], that's about $2 per phone sold in 2021 [1].
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/apple-spending-450-million-w...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-11/apple-exp...
Whatever the iPhone 14 is using to talk to the Globalstar satellites, I'd be extremely surprised if it looked anything like LTE or 5G at the physical or logical layer.
[1] https://investors.globalstar.com/news-releases/news-release-...
But my point is that this probably has very little to do with Globalstar's terrestrial band 53 efforts, other than possibly sharing some HF hardware in the new iPhones given that they support both that terrestrial LTE/5G band and satellite messaging.
Google Maps on iOS let’s you choose squares on the planet and download offline maps.
Open the app, click your initial at the top right and you’ll see Offline Maps in the drop-down.
Driving directions only though. But you can search for POIs and it will navigate you there. Or you can look at the maps/streets.
I use it regularly in USA and Europe when I don’t have a data plan there. Or when I’m low/out of data in Canada because Canadian telecom sucks. Or when Rogers shits the bed.
I also have Kiwix with full copies of Wikipedia (about 85gb) and a few other resources. And a small solar panel so when doomsday hits…
It does background refresh but unsure how great it is. Right know my maps expire with different dates between July and November 2023, so I guess it’s keeping up to date enough.
> "To offer this new feature, Apple had to integrate a miniature antenna in its smartphone. It captures part of the signal of satellite constellations without relying on a satellite dish or a specific telephone handset. The iPhone manufacturer signed an agreement with Globalstar, one of the operators of low-altitude constellations, sets of satellites flying at about 500 kilometers from the Earth, in order to cover low-coverage areas of the globe. Specializing since 2007 in professional satellite messaging, Globalstar explained that it reached an agreement to launch 17 new satellites for 327 million dollars, 95% of which will be financed by Apple in exchange for 85% of their bandwidth."
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/09/13/apple-a...
But I am pretty sure that is a LOT more bandwidth than what will be used for highly compressed text messages in emergencies.
[0] https://www.globalstar.com/Globalstar/media/Globalstar/Downl...
In sat-networks, well, MHz-POP doesn't matter that much, because, generally, every operator is licensed to operate in the whole country. As you mentioned, what really matters is (a) the bandwidth of their license allocation (e.g., Globalstar is 11.5 MHz), and (b) how efficiently can they reuse spectrum:
* how many beams can they land (# satellite x # beams / satellite)?
* how much freedom do they have to chunk bandwidth and allocate it to individual beams based on demand?
* what type of satellite are they using, bent-pipe or regenerative payload?
* how big are these beams?
* can they allocate resources dynamically or is everything fixed?
* how much power does the satellite have? how big are the terminal antennas? what kind of link-budget can they close?
In the end, the MHz/customer they can achieve depends on the answer to all these questions.
Iridium has been around for soo long...I am getting constant outages from the status page. Kind of disconcerting at times.
Ah, I found the following article that somewhat explains the different technologies w/
"The main difference between Iridium and Globalstar is the relaying mechanism. Iridium requires relaying between satellites. Globalstar requires relaying between satellites and earth stations."
https://www.mobilsat.com/the-best-satellite-phone-globalstar...
Apple is paying for 95% of Globalstar's new satellites and plans to use 85% of their network capacity.
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Navigation/Galileo_now_repl...
But really, I desperately hope that we can find a way to educate folks on the proper usage of technology like this (which, if you count things like the Garmin inReach and the Spot devices, has been available for a decade).
They're undoubtedly life saving, but they also are taxing mostly volunteer-run search and rescue organizations with folks who really probably don't need help, they just needed to bring some water and a jacket. But they didn't , because they didn't know better, and now need someone to risk themselves on their behalf.
It makes me nervous about the longevity of volunteer-run search and rescue organizations, frankly. It's unfortunate that these are the majority, at least in the rural parts of USA that draw lots of outdoor adventurers.
The problem for the teams isn’t necessarily finding the party, we’ve had these beacons for years. Rather they have to climb into the mountains in the first place to solve what could have, ostensibly, been readily prevented.
Thus taxing a limited resource even further.
What should temper that is now there perhaps may be signs posted telling folks about the service, and that help is available (or not) but it’s likely going to be rather expensive if they have to come get you. It’s never been suggested that while the S&R teams maybe volunteer, as I understand the rescued party incurs costs of the operation.
Usually it's the ambulance / helicopter ride. But even then, there are helicopter operators (like the U.S. military, which responds to many SAR calls where I live) that don't charge.
I don't have data to support this, but I guess that at least 40% of Americans would agree with the statement, "I take cost into consideration when I make a call to emergency services."
You'll get the local 911 response units, and it might be a Sheriff's deputy, fire, or EMS.
If you're in California you're also likely to get a rescue helicopter operated by CHP, and if they pluck you out of a ravine, the bill is $zero. Really, it's taxpayer funded. We operate with them quite often.
Rather, my concern is with the volume. Lots of "I'm Cold, Please Help" calls could take resources away from rarer but far more resource-intensive "My leg is broken, and I"m 10 miles out" calls.
We always prefer calls to come in as early as possible, where maybe an issue can be resolved with advice or a daylight shout to an warm, ambulatory casualty in mild distress. That will always be preferable to a long search for a casualty in possibly deteriorating weather, losing light, without comms, with the prospect of a rescue turning into a recovery.
Mobile phones may have greatly increased the number of SAR shouts worldwide, but also massively reduced shout lengths. Searching used to be the largest time sink in every shout, which is no longer the case.
Every SAR team has frivolous calls, but that's part of the game.
I didn't really communicate this well, but my real fear is this: that folks who otherwise might not journey out into somewhat challenging situations because of their lack of confidence in their self-sufficiency might decide to do so because they can "call for help if they need it."
SAR's around the US are experience this in very high volumes.
Part of me doesn't love that there's an increasing expectation that you're always able to be in contact. But, so it goes.
As a paying customer with Garmin's inReach service, I'm acutely aware of how spotty and unreliable the service can be based on environment and current surroundings.
"A $450 million investment from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund provides the critical infrastructure that supports Emergency SOS via satellite for iPhone 14 models."
"Once received by a ground station, the message is routed to emergency services that can dispatch help, or a relay center with Apple-trained emergency specialists if local emergency services cannot receive text messages."
"In 2021, Apple announced an acceleration in its US investments, with plans to make new contributions of more than $430 billion over a five-year period."
Apple has probably given this some thought.
If you are going to do extreme hiking in Patagonia, get a real distress beacon. There is no service charge except for the device itself.
This is no joke - I had to use mine in the middle of Death Valley (of all places) during a seizure-like episode. Saved my life.
121.5 ELTs - requiring sar aircraft proximity - are obsolete.
you can pretty much tell what an iphone will be able to do based on what qualcomm is currently able to do
From: https://www.everythingrf.com/tech-resources/lte-bands/lte-ba...
Quite impressive they can receive that on the satellite with 1W (guess) of power and a not very directional antenna in the iPhone.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/iphone/standar... - Shows the screen you'd see.
Strictly speaking, if that were the case then the iPhone 13 would have been able to do it. [0]
The technology (Band 53/n53) and the timeline (end of 2022) are mentioned in the Sep 2022 SEC filing of the agreement between Globalsat and Apple. [1]
[0] https://www.semianalysis.com/p/no-the-iphone-13-does-not-hav...
[1] https://investors.globalstar.com/node/14431/html
I certainly don’t mean to poo-poo this announcement in HN commenter fashion—-I think it’s actually really great to have. Just wanted to highlight an alternative to shelling out $1k+ for a capable phone if you don’t have one.
I'm a licensed ham and have worked emergency events. I would not rely upon this if my life depended on it.
It says free for the first 2 years. I'm curious what the yearly cost will be after that, and how it will compare to an Inreach plan. On an ongoing basis, it's the subscription fees that really add up.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=9NWiPDU4gM0JWMfdWFol7A
The new GPS chipsets are absolutely a beast in challenging conditions and incredibly accurate/precise over the older technology.
Having a phone on the handlebar/top tube is cumbersome and annoying, battery life is crap and distractions galore. I don't want needless phone calls from annoying people interrupting my workout and distracting me from watching the road. I've set up my Garmin devices to ignore phone calls and texts from the phone during workouts.
As an FYI, if you have an iPhone, you can set a "Fitness" focus mode that turns on automatically when a workout is started. From there, you can specify which contacts can pop a notification during workouts (or none at all). I let my wife and my parents get through.
But, like you, not that I'd use a phone as a bike computer to begin with.
The latest high-end Garmin devices do support multi-frequency GPS just as accurate as the iPhone 14. Those chips aren't included in Garmin's mid-range products like Edge 5XX/8XX series bike computers but will probably be added in the next refresh.
More casual cyclists might use their phones since they already have those and don't want to buy an extra bike computer - but that was already true in the past.
My take is the Apple SOS is for people who are unprepared and surprised, and who wouldn’t have bought a satellite comm device and paid for the subscription because they weren’t expecting the emergency.
I’m a happy iPhone 14 user who will get this nice feature, but I’m not planning to cancel my InReach subscription ($20/month, pause/resume any time), which I have never used to call for a rescue but have used a lot to let family know where I am and that things are fine when overlanding. And Inreach works right from the dashboard while driving, no need to get situated perfectly.
Maybe this is a harbinger and future enhancements will kill Inreach, but at least for now it feels like a very different application.
Is it wrong to call for help when you are lost only 300 yards off trail like you said? I would be embarrassed - but is anyone going to be upset?
A lot of my buddies rescues are older people who just got a little lost, or slipped down a steep embankment and can’t get back up. The worst ones are when that happens, but it’s been 3 days and the chances they find a live person are more slim.
The SAR people vastly prefer finding people alive, so if you need help, give them a chance for a happy ending by calling.
Absent some combination of map and compass--in some form--it's super-easy to get totally disoriented absent trail and landmarks. Long before cell phones, I still remember going on a casual short off-trail jaunt to a lighthouse in Nova Scotia and suddenly realizing I really didn't know where I was. Took a deep breath, carefully figured things out, and I was fine (the boundaries were pretty constrained anyway). But it's not hard.
I own a PLB that I use for safety when spearfishing from a kayak in Northern CA, but I don't bother throwing it in my pocket if I'm just walking the dog in the woods for a couple minutes. I can see this being a big help.
And, pretty much every year, there's at least one hiker who goes missing for days. If they're young and lucky, they manage to subsist, and SAR finds them eventually. If not... well, sometimes another hiker finds the body years later, but there's no shortage of names on the missing person list, either.
They would much rather be on alert and be stood down, or assist someone over the phone who called early and is easy to find and help. The problem is that many people wait until conditions deteriorate or they are much more lost.
Sending a team of a few people to go out and call your name along a trail during the day in clear weather is easy. Sending a team of people to find a hypothermic or injured person at night and extract them is an order of magnitude more involved and risky.
In other words, no one will be upset if you call out of caution.
Mistakes happen.
And if you stay lost through the night, hypothermia can get you fast even in places where you only need a t-shirt during the day.
I’m not looking to use it for weeks-long trips. Mostly trail running and maybe a few days in the back country.
Garmin inReach is a robust and rugged satellite communicator that out classes iPhone emergency SOS greatly
- inreach doesn't require "tracking" the satellite as it has a stronger antenna - inreach is more waterproof, dust proof atd shock resistant (no touch screen) - inreach has higher battery life, SOS can be activated while the device is off - ability to send messages, which can be critical if there are no cell towers that can be boosned/activated
That said, it is a great innovation; I think the Apple Watch Ultra will cut more into the diving watch market than the iPhone into the satellite communicator market
The people that don’t care about AI dive with a perdix or tables, but basically require something you can operate with gloves on. The rest of them with the money for a nice watch really want AI.
Most dive computers make it difficult or impossible to do dive planning for more complex scenarios. For example, the Garmin Descent Mk2 has a Plan Dive activity profile. But it only supports square profile dives, doesn't properly handle travel gas, and doesn't generate contingency plans for loss of deco gas. So we have to do dive planning with other software that can generate tables.
https://youtu.be/SHva-wG7w0Q
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-120241CE-9583-4...
Personally I use the Mk2 because I mostly do technical dives and have little use for AI, but divers like me are a tiny market niche. The latest Shearwater Perdix models do support AI. If Garmin launches a Descent "Mk3" product line as expected next year it might include AI as a standard feature across all models.
Apple watch with dive computer and air integration though would be awesome. Garmins is $1500 (+700$) so the margin should be there.
I own one and when I brought it on a remote expedition I found it to be a buggy POS: duplicated messages, stuck connection requiring resets, garbled messages.
That being said, the current iPhone 14 satellite function wouldn’t have worked at all for my purpose in those circumstances.
1. It's nice to have a backup. 2. The battery life on the inReach is upwards of a month and it's more rugged. 3. You can throw it in your pack, forget about it, and somehow it stills gets a signal. 3. Garmin has a dedicated communications center (IERCC) that has tons of experience coordinating with first responders. They will keep your emergency contacts updated about your rescue. Apple's system is less proven.
Another use case: The there are two highways between my metro area and the Pacific coast. Both are pretty remote through the forest. One has decent coverage with only a couple of mile long dropouts along the way. The other road has essentially zero cell coverage for about 20 miles and spotty coverage for another 20 miles. Winter travelers have gone off the road and not been found for hours or even days. This device could certainly save a life in that case.
> A text compression algorithm was also developed to reduce the average size of messages by 300 percent
I don't think that's how percentages work.
So the percentage "works", in a way, until you get to the freeform text.
- Probe
- Shovel
- Beacon
- InReach Mini
I also work SAR and my partner has worked dispatch for the National Park Service here and it's not uncommon for someone to be trying to climb something akin to Longs Peak late fall in a tshirt and shorts - having absolutely no idea what they are doing but hiking it because they saw it on All Trails.
I'm sure this is going to lead to a few spectacular, high-profile rescues, but I'd bet the average use case is going to be "saved me three hours of crawling through the woods on a broken ankle to get back to the last place I had cell service."
If you go hiking or heli-skiing...
I'd bet a paycheck that Apple's use cases did not include those that jump out of a helicopter to go skiing. Those folks, if they have any sense, have a dedicated device, as you state. I'm picturing this being for those like above, who just wanted a casual Saturday hike and something went wrong.
You'd be shocked at the number of people who carry their beacon, probe, shovel, etc but not an InReach or Spot device. With that said, most groups have at least one and are playing the odds game that it won't be them that has an issue and can't access it.
An InReach Mini costs roughly $300 while a Spot device costs less than $200. An iPhone 14 is $800.
"You'd be shocked at the number of people who carry their beacon, probe, shovel, etc but not an InReach or Spot device."
https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=...
Then remember this map is being extremely generous at the fringes of the coverage areas. Some areas will make a huge difference which side of a hill you're on, but this coverage map will show it as covered.
From your name I suspect you may be German (if you are Austrian or Swiss, the following still applies, only more so).
Alaska alone is nearly 5 times the size of Germany, with less than 1% of the population.
Android: https://www.thuraya.com/en/products-list/land-voice/thuraya-...
Lynk: https://lynk.world/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/a-virginia-company-h...
Add-on for existing phone: https://www.bluecosmo.com/iridium-go-global-smartphone-acces...
T-Mobile is planning on it: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove...
If I'm a US customer but am stranded in the middle of Africa, will this work?
I take this to mean the service itself only works within the stated countries. I wonder if it would work in overseas US territories like Samoa.
If you have an African iPhone 14 and are stranded in the middle of the US, it should work.
I've communicated via LEO satellites using only 1 watt of power from an handheld radio.
For OP if you want to see it in action there are plenty of YouTube videos[0] of amateur radio operators with an HT (walkie-talkie) contacting astronauts on the ISS - which is 254 miles up.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3cZe-UASAHs
The user points the phone at the satellite (in reality, the UI tells the user where to put the phone in relation to it's measured antenna pattern to maximize the gain towards the nearest satellite), while the satellite has a huge, very very high gain antenna array to pick up the signal and pass it back down to a ground station. iPhones can output up to 2 watts of RF power, which is enough for a tiny <HELP! Here's my LAT/LON & status> message. It's using 5G NR band 53 [2][3]
I'm sure someone out there has already run a linkbudget and posted it to their blog, but I haven't found it yet.
[0] https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/globalstar-2.htm
[1] https://www.findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/spot-gen4
[2] https://gearjunkie.com/news/apple-iphone-satellite-messaging...
[3] https://itecspec.com/band/nr-band-n53/
> The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Which kind of implies it will be a pay for service after two years.
If I were the product manager there, I would fight tooth and nail to only make a short term commitment to support it at all. Two years in, if it's un unmitigated disaster costing $1B/year and generating zero rescues and zero PR, kill it. You can't do that if you've promised "free for the life of the phone" or something.
And don't require the payment to go through before unlocking the feature, obviously. There will be some people who you can never collect payment from, but not that many.
Don't think they want to look like they're charging people to keep their lives.
So I think this is an advantage. If, lets say, it costs 4.99 a year, I think a good percentage of people would do that (me included, even though I'm not an iPhone user).
Much more likely they'll just add P2P messaging as a paid feature.
I think it's a shitty thing to do to not at least say what the cost will be at least given today's information.
Seems to me this is for ordinary people doing ordinary things outside cell range, and finding they need help. A family member has a heart attack. A collision with a moose. Who knows what.
Less “should’ve brought water and a jacket” and more “we’ve been on route 9 for two hours, a moment ago everything was fine, now he’s not breathing, we have no bars, and we have no idea where the nearest hospital is.”
Besides, even if this feature only saves a single life, seems worth it to me.
Not that I think it will only save a single life, but if that really were the full extent of its benefit that of course it wouldn't be worth it - think of the millions Apple have spent on R&D plus the (presumably tiny but it adds up when selling millions of devices) extra cost per device - there are many ways that money could have been spent as a PR move by Apple to save thousands if not millions of lives.
When I talked about spending money as a PR move I meant non-product related, the way companies donate to charities, or do charitable research, or hell they could've even invested in for-profit health startups that would have a higher expectation than saving a single life.
Building products that saves lives will increase sales, because people want to be safe, thus increasing profits.
How does donating to charity increase profits? It doesn't, so why would Apple spend money there?
Apple is not in the business of saving lives, they're in the business of building tech products. If those tech products can also save lives, that's the most life-saving we can expect from a profit-seeking company that builds tech products.
I don't understand why you're expecting Apple to save lives at a loss.
I wasn't saying that at all, and I think if you reread both my comments and the context of the thread you'll see that.
I was replying specifically to the claim that if it would save a single life it would have been worth Apple doing. And if it were only to save a single life, Apple would have wasted a huge amount of money on that single life, when they could have redirected it towards other ways to waste their money but saving more lives.
I was purely pointing out that nobody should think it worth it "if it just saved one life". Not arguing for how Apple should spend money in other areas, just discussing in the context of if Apple were spending money on saving lives.
But... while you ask - it's actually very common for companies, big and small, to spend money on charities, usually because they think the public image benefit outweighs the cost. Apple DO spend money on, for example, donating money to HIV charities through their PRODUCT(RED) scheme. https://www.apple.com/uk/product-red/
And they spent money on this new feature being discussed in this thread (I assume because they expect it to save more than a single life!).
Also having worked there they are also a bunch of people who like to build great products.
And aren't motivated by the bottom line of the company.
Apple has 200B in cash and investments in the bank and the 2024 National Cancer Institute’s budget is 10 billion.
Sure it has "driving mode" but you can still override it.
Not everyone that moves at driving speeds is driving, especially in places outside of America.
That’s just one of many edge cases where disabling cellphone service for moving callers is downright dangerous.
Maybe make it an insurance lock feature!
It's very easy in the US West to get out of cell service very quickly - at that point, even just throwing an ankle or tripping can put you at the mercy of your hiking companion or random strangers on the trail. If you're going somewhere less traveled, this is just a nice thing to have in your pocket.
This feature isn't going to save you after you've been buried in an avalanche, but it's going to get search and rescue to carry you out when you're 10 miles from the parking lot. Worth the cost.
Not the biggest Apple fan, but I have to let them have this one. If I weren't so invested in the not-Apple ecosystem, I'd consider switching.
Would the corollary of this be “if a feature causes a single death it’s not worth it” ?
That would be an interesting angle to look at when Apple revamps its lock screen, changes privacy policy settings on GPS tracking etc.
While we hope to never use it, we think this feature is a game changer for rural travel.
Kim and his family were stranded on a rural route traveling from Portland to San Francisco. He went out in search of help and succumbed to hypothermia.
It was unusual, however there are "backcountry" incidents that don't necessarily involve intentionally setting out into remote areas.
I suspect, being a tech reporter, Kim would have had a satellite SOS enabled smartphone if it had been on the market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim#Snowbound
Low orbit satellites can be about 500 kilometers / 300 miles so would be the logical next step?
All I can say is THANK GOD that I did, because it turned into over a week long effort to get them out. Two decided to walk out and were able to text me a nav point that I was able to meet them at (took all day to get there because of the snow and mud, but I made it and was able to pick them up). The other two stayed up there, and we sent probably 100 texts back and forth coordinating what turned into like 3 solid days of fighting to get up there with snowcats and get them back down. Multiple situational changes that we would have been hosed without.
In the end, I spent like $80 on texts, but it was money well spent. I think it's great for people to have SOS built into their iPhone, but there needs to be a "use it now, pay later" or no one is going to activate it and actually have it available when they need it. The other half of the equation is that you really need to be able to send texts. The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive. That will keep a lot of people from using it. (Yes insurance exists, but hardly anyone has it). Being able to text your friends for help is substantially more useful. Being stuck on a backroad with no service, 5, 10, 20 miles from where anyone can be expected to drive by is a far more common scenario than breaking your leg at the top of a mountain and needing to be evacuated.
This is nothing special about the iPhone or the version; every cell phone is supposed to put through calls to 911:
> All wireless phones, even those that are not subscribed to or supported by a specific carrier, can call 911.
https://www.911.gov/calling-911/frequently-asked-questions/
> For Emergency services there is no “activate and pay later” because you don’t need to activate, and you don’t need to pay. If you have an iPhone 14 it’s supposed to just work if you’re calling 911.
The Emergency SOS seems explicitly to require activation, and to have a cost (eventually):
> The service will be included for free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.4
So I assumed that the parent was referring to just calling 911 using the normal cell network, which can indeed be done, on any mobile phone (that is able to dial, of course), without activation or payment.
Just read up on the feature, if you’re curious.
The “use and pay later” scheme refers to an emergency system that is pay-per-use or requires an ongoing payment (e.g. subscription); the idea would be that if you use the feature at all it works immediately but will charge you for that sometime later (kinda like how an ambulance will pick you up right away but bill you for the privilege later).
Did you mean to say "work AS if you're calling 911"? The emergency message via satellite function has to be explicitly used instead of just calling 911
To the average user, they will try to dial 911, the iPhone won’t be able to complete a cellular 911 call and will then present the user with the UI for sending an emergency message to first responders. I don’t really see the need for distinction, except between an iPhone 14 and a 13, or an android, which would fail to make the 911 call and that’s it.
With my inReach I pay for the insurance plan [1]. I do wilderness float/canoe/kayak trips and I have it for peace of mind in case I or somebody I'm with (or encounter) is immobilized, as I can walk out of most places I go to if my legs are working.
I haven't been able to find any such option for the iPhone, which, amongst other things, means I'll be keeping my inReach. Though to be clear I don't know to what degree I would be on the hook for anything if I _did_ hit the SOS button.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/906397
Additionally, know how your device works - end to end - regardless of what it is. You gain a lot of knowledge and life saving techniques by knowing the process that is kicked off, it's timeframe, etc.
Alternatively, you can spend about $200 one time on a personal locator beacon that requires no ongoing costs. It can't do two-way communication but activating it sends out a specific frequency picked up by satellites and is the equivalent of calling 911. Rescuers will come to help you.
All serious hikers and outdoor adventurers should carry a personal locator beacon.
Out of curiosity... is there any way to alert your local emergency department in advance of testing a beacon, so you can verify that it works?
These devices require a new battery every few years and that service includes a test done by the manufacturer. There is also a self test button on the device which does not send a message to the satellites.
If you really feel the need to send test messages into space, they do support that but then you need a subscription (https://www.acrartex.com/406link/). At that point you may as well buy a different device which has 2 way messaging included in the subscription. PLB users generally do trust that their devices work the first time they're used for real, and this trust is backed up by a lot of real world use.
Although they are not foolproof. See for example the story of Kate Matrosova. [1] Basically, mountain shadows made the location readings erratic which, in combination with extremely bad weather, meant rescuers couldn't find her.
[1] https://www3.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/21/the-young-woma...
PLBs are tested down to -40° so it might have stayed working for longer as the weather got worse. It is of course impossible to say if Kate might have survived under other circumstances except that (not very interestingly) if she's decided the weather was too awful and aborted she'd almost certainly live.
The book was interesting mostly for all the SAR detail. The accident, sadly, was mostly in the category of--however fit and well-equipped you are--don't try to beat a very bad incoming storm on an exposed ridge line in the middle of winter. If she had turned around at Madison Hut or wherever she'd have been fine.
Those of us who are programmers usually default to "If it's not tested end to end, it won't work," and that is the sentiment I was responding to.
Actual PLBs (not SPOT) have a backup strategy in the event the GPS signal is obscured by mountains.
If the device can't get a reliable GPS fix, the satellites will resort to measuring doppler shift as they pass overhead to locate the transmitter. It's slower (takes several passes of the satellite, so we're talking hours) and less accurate, but it will get rescuers to the general direction.
From there, PLB devices also transmit a low-power homing signal on 121.5 MHz (the aviation distress frequency) that SAR teams can locate using radio direction-finding equipment.
However, a device like the Garmin inReach requires an active subscription for the SOS to work. If there's a glitch with your credit card and the service becomes inactive while you're on travels, it might not work.
Another difference is that an inReach SOS message goes to the Garmin-run https://www.iercc.com/en-US/about/ rescue coordination center who will the relay to rescue services.
Whereas a PLB or EPIRB communicate with the Cospas-Sarsat system and is handled directly by government rescue agencies (https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/mission-control-center). While the Garmin service works great, I have more trust in the USMCC being always responsive than any private company.
So the best advise is to have both. I have an EPIRB (for boating) and a couple PLBs in addition the the Garmin inReach. I use the inReach for casual messaging but if I ever have a real emergency I'll activate the PLB and EPIRB first and only afterwards start trying to message via the Garmin.
For PLB specifically you cannot test them. Once you activate them, they continually broadcast and cannot be canceled except by destroying the device. For messengers, they hook up to a web service and you can send messages to personal email or SMS via the sat network as your test.
Any geostationary sat would be low on the southern horizon in Alaska. That's just how geostationary orbits work, they are over the equator. Though pretty high above (35.000km/22.000mi). So it's still visible there but yeah you need a clear view of the southern horizon.
But Globalstar which runs the service for SPOT only has low earth orbit sats which are definitely not geostationary. They're only at a few hundred kilometers.
However it could very well be that their orbits are aligned so that they are always pretty low to the south from Alaska, yes.
And answers your question: "Each device has a test mode that will communicate with the SARSAT satellite network without sending an alert."
That explanation is factually incorrect, then. There currently is no "test" flag, nor is there the required infrastructure to check if your test alert went through:
https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/emergency_beacon-testing/
So this "self-test" feature can't be communicating with actual satellites. No idea what it actually does, but it's definitely not an end-to-end test.
This policy document mentions that the "self-test" feature actually does not communicate with satellites at all, and also mentions a "test frame" that is discarded by satellites, as well as a "test protocol" that is forwarded by satellites, but discarded by the ground segment: https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/POL-MCC-051-v...
So it seems like both the "self-test" and the "test frame" don't tell you a lot about how well your beacon would work in case of an actual emergency (unless you have equipment that can receive and interpret that signal), and live testing involves a lot of paperwork.
Yeah, the cheapest plan is $14.95/mo ($11.95/mo if you pay for 12 months) and includes 10 "free" text's, $0.50/text after that.
I wish they had a non-cost plan (or maybe $10/year) plus $5/text or something like that for use in an emergency. I have an InReach, but haven't used it for an emergency (yet), I've sent a few texts to friends/family while outside of cellular coverage since they are "free", but would rather save money and only pay if I need to use it in an emergency situation.
Maybe they'll have to get more flexible with their plans now that the iPhone has this feature, and T-Mobile is reportedly coming out with Satellite connectivity for phones.
Given that the outdoor SAR use case is probably the largest reason for people to get one of these devices in the first place, I doubt that such a model would be economically sustainable (unless subsidized by government agencies or possibly insurances saving money due to spending less on large-scale search operations).
Vendors could also bake a free SAR plan into the initial sales price, I suppose.
Today, 100 InReach subscribers nets Garmin around $144/yr * 100 people = $14,400
If the InReach were free except for when activating the SOS, the SOS would have to cost $14,000 to make that same revenue from the same number of users. This would surely lead to more deaths due to folks waiting way longer to send an SOS.
Numbers are estimates but the order of magnitude shouldn't be too far off.
Some users still prefer a standalone device, want P2P messaging functionality (until Apple adds that, too), or need coverage beyond Globalstar – I'd be curious to see how much of the market that is, in the end.
But it's expensive if it's compared to $0 for a feature that's already built into my phone. (though it remains to see how long Apple keeps it free since they only say it's "free for 2 years")
There's a lot of situations in which I'd appreciate being able to call help without possibly triggering an expensive helicopter SAR operation, when sending a park ranger would be more than sufficient (e.g. a sprained ankle a mile off the trailhead when solo hiking).
Another advantage of two-way communicators is being able to get instructions from the SAR team: It can be vital to know whether you should e.g. go to higher ground (because your signal has not been received yet) or conversely seek shelter from the elements for a couple of hours. Newer PLBs partially solve that problem though, thanks to Galileo's "blue light" return channel.
I finally broke down and got my inreach as I was exploring a canyon way out in the desert and a rockslide almost took out my ankle. I told my Wife when I got back and she made me get one as I most likely would have been in serious trouble as cell signal was not working and nobody was in miles of me.
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-6E5DFD2E-EEE4-4...
It can send & receive text messages either by itself (that's a pain since you have to select letters one by one with arrow keys, but it works) or paired to a supported external device like a tablet.
The reason for this is that they can learn about what they need to do and who they need to send to you, because they can ask you.
If you have a broken leg, they'll send in 10 people to get you out. Dehydrated? Two responders and water.
Calls that come in from "dumb" communicators like PLBs are more likely to get a 1-2 person "hasty" team assigned to them who can arrive quickly then call in more reinforcements if necessary. A SAR org. isn't going to put 10 volunteers on a PLB call that ends up being a rolled ankle, at least not immediately.
This has the potential to greatly delay the time to care for you, especially for more severe emergencies.
"Hurry, but please hold the helicopter, I won't make enough money for the rest of my life to pay for it, whether I survive or not."
It works well enough for us to have maybe 4 snowmobiles, 2 6-wheel ATV's, a 4 person rope rescue kit, 10 TETRA phones and a car in addition to various medical equipment.
It sounds like your team has the advantage of having a large volunteer corpus. I wish they all did.
You buy the hardware, pay a $30 activation fee, and a then pay monthly for the service.
There are several service plans ranging from $15 a month to $65 a month. The cheap plan comes with 10 texts a month and the $65 a month plan has unlimited texting.
If you pay an additional $35 annual fee, you can suspend the plan during months you would not use it.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/837461/pn/010-06000-SU
I'd be surprised if Apple does not launch this as a paid feature sooner rather than later (possibly as a perk part of Apple One or one of their other subscription plans).
Want to address one point however: "The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive"
In my experience on multiple SAR teams (Search and Rescue), this is almost never the case in North America. Search and Rescue is one of the few services that is almost uniformly free [1]. Thousands and thousands of volunteer hours every year keep it that way. In fact, the two most prominent professional organizations for SAR (NASAR [2] & MRA [3]) both have longstanding policies that teams should not charge for rescue. On a personal level, I can tell you that the majority of the rescues/recoveries I have worked in the last decade would have been easier or led to a better outcome if the subject had called earlier. Embarrassment and fear of cost are the two primary reasons I have had subjects quote as the reasons they delayed calling for rescue, even after they knew self-rescue would not be possible. When you realize self-rescue isn't possible, call us early.
[1] The only counties that I know of that charge for rescue are in Utah: https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=54909102&itype=CMS... [2] https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2009/05/billing-search... [3] https://mra.org/what-is-mras-position-on-charging-for-search...
In a real SOS situation the cost is likely immaterial, but I can absolutely understand why people would wait a bit longer than they should before pressing.
Not in Canada. SAR is completely free in Canada for the reason you've basically alluded to in your next paragraph.
> but I can absolutely understand why people would wait a bit longer than they should before pressing.
I've been to a number of presentations from the local SAR, and whenever they're asked about this, they say that the reason SAR has no cost is precisely because they never want people to hesitate before pressing the button or making the call.
oh well thank God for that. this won't bankrupt anyone.
I wonder if this will remain true once everyone with an iPhone has access to it. The increase in volume could easily overwhelm the volunteers, no?
While there is the argument that these devices give increased peace of mind that the backcountry is somehow "safer", I don't know that I've seen this cause an uptick in callouts for our team. Subjects needing rescue are still usually hesitant to call for rescue and usually try to self extricate, even when they should likely initiate a rescue. Most of our call-outs happen at night for this reason.
That said, the upside of these devices is significant - especially in the area of improving our response time and reducing total callout time. The advent of the E911 Phase 2 (including location in 911 calls) has made the majority of our call-outs dramatically simpler & faster. What was formerly a multi-step process which might involve something like deploying multiple hasty teams to sweep large areas; determining subject location; deploying specialized resources for extraction -- can now jump straight to deploying a single hasty team for medical while simultaneously deploying specialized resources given that the terrain & access is known via the subject's location.
Edit: I can't edit my above comment, but just got confirmation from a friend both Grand and Wayne have revised their rescue policy and now only charge in exceptional circumstances - https://www.grandcountyutah.net/734/Donate-to-GCSAR
Someone with the knowledge and foresight to bring along a Garmin or PLB or something probably has a decent understanding of what it means to use it - waking people up and deploying expensive assets - and because of that I can see why they'd probably hesitate (it surely would trigger my "I don't want to be a bother" instinct).
I hope once every iPhone user has the same capability that it doesn't become an "eternal September"-like moment and flip too far the other way into overly casual use.
Regardless, you're much closer to the situation than I am so I'll defer to your expertise. Clearly, more communications in an emergency is always going to be better, so I look forward to seeing stories about how this new feature saves lives.
And thanks for your efforts in providing rescue services to the people who need them!
I do tend to agree that this has a pretty good chance of creating more nuisance calls from people who are not in actual danger...I read the New York forest rangers reports now and then, and a big portion of the rescues involve clueless people who set off alone with no map, an hour before sunset in October wearing a tshirt and shorts.
Like, the moment you're sufficiently sure you might be lost or at risk/danger. Then at least they know you're out there and where to start looking from your last known location even if you don't need help yet. They might also be able to trivially guide you for self-rescue instead of the situation escalating into requiring rescue or becoming a much more complex rescue.
But if it's just a simply SOS device, then, well, yeah, it can become a nuisance because that can mean "I'm a bit lost" or "I'm quickly dying" and anything in-between and they have no way of knowing.
I wonder if part of the reason more people are involved in backcountry recreation is due to it not feeling as dangerous as it used to because people figure (rightly or wrongly) they can always get help from my phone.
Anyway, I agree with your reasoning that it's important that backcountry rescue be free, becuase of people not calling as early as they should because of worry of cost, and resulting injury, death, or just more complicated rescue... but even though you're assuring me of it, I'm still not sure it's true! I feel like I hear stories all the time (which googling seems to confirm?) of people being charged when someone determines they deserved it or something, depending on who ends up responding... which would make me reluctant to SOS too. I believe you the outfits you work with never charge, but when I'm in an emergency or possible-emergency, I have no way of knowing if it's going to end up being that situation or not... which is a problem.
mostly its just made it safer because you now can call for help isntead of having to hike out
But overall, the rescue services managed easily. The growth was slow enough over a couple of years, that it's easy enough to scale up the number of volunteers as needed. In my experience, when you get more callouts, more people are eager to volunteer. No-one wants to spend regular time doing training when there aren't any callouts.
Just wanted to come and confirm based on first hand experience that this is true and also say a heart felt thank you for doing what you do!
The SAR might be technically "free", but they'll categorize as many things under "medical emergency" as possible and throw the book of fines at you.
Then you, the rescued, file a claim with whatever insurance you think is appropriate and make your case. Maybe insurance investigates and looks up the SAR incident report, maybe they don't. Either way SAR isn't part of any alleged insurance fraud.
> The SAR might be technically "free", but they'll categorize as many things under "medical emergency" as possible and throw the book of fines at you.
And then seemed to imply that's what they did when someone just got lost. Okay they will do it regardless if you have insurance or not, still fraud isn't it?
Search is trivial if you're calling in help yourself since just about any device that can call for help will communicate where you are. Gets more complicated for a wide area search called in by someone else though, because that is expensive; but then the target's medical condition is unknown and likely assumed to be for the worst.
If you're completely healthy but in need of rescue eventually, they'll dispatch some better equipped volunteers to retrace your steps and rescue you out of whatever situation you're in.
One time our rope caught on something after we released it, so we couldn't ascend to unstick it, but couldn't descend further without the rope. That would've been a SAR call if there wasn't another group above us that could partially descend on their rope and unstick our rope for us. But it would've been a trivial rescue since we could've reasonably survived stuck on the shaded alcove for a couple days until we got another rope. A ranger or volunteer would've been dispatched to unstick the rope or with their own for us to use, not a helicopter to extract us out.
It's when there's an immediate risk to life, that's what causes urgency, which is the main driver for cost because then typically helicopters are involved. If they itemize by search, rescue, and medical, why wouldn't medical greatly dominate the costs?
"At risk of needing medical attention", e.g., dying of thirst of exposure after a few days when you're lost, is not a medical emergency though. This isn't even some esoteric legalize it's just obvious common sense. You were talking about things like just getting lost, and SAR trying to file as much as they possibly can under "medical emergency". Definitely sounds like fraud.
It's really the same as the US (other than our states and cities acting more like corporations), it comes down to who gets dispatched: if it's the government you're fine, but oftentimes if you're near a resort, it comes down to whether dispatch thinks the resort staff, a government agency, or a volunteer group is better suited for the rescue. If it's the resort, you might've agreed to give them the legal right to claw back costs.
[1] https://www.metro.us/grouse-bans-4-bills-for-rescue/
In practise, SAR is free in Canada no matter where you are. There are hundreds and hundreds of SAR calls in BC per year, and not a single person rescued has been required to pay a cent. Many of them do make donations though as a token of thanks.
[1] https://vancouversun.com/news/costs-still-being-tallied-afte...
It certainly puts their efforts into perspective, including how easily people can run into trouble unprepared.
I can say I was completely out of my comfort zone when two tried to walk out, that turned into the most stressful day of our lives. I think everyone thought they were going to die: the two walking out from hypothermia, me from a bear that didn't want to leave me alone when I was on foot looking for them. It wound up taking them hours longer than expected to walk out, and I kept getting stuck looking for them, to the point I thought I was sleeping in my car that night (while they potentially froze to death) because I was like 12 miles from a main road, and had no cell signal, and hadn't found them yet. I'd much rather have called S&R!!
By the straightest path, they had about 5 miles to go. I had about 12 of bad road. I got there an hour late and thought I missed them. I spent another 2 hours looking for them before finally finding them (at dusk). I was actually about to leave and go call S&R. It turns out, the path path of least resistance turned into 10 miles, which is why it took so long. One had mild hypothermia when I found them.
Ultimately, I wouldn't have known they were trying to walk out unless they could text me. Location is super helpful, and I wish we had more than one InReach as a group, as I would have found them more easily.
Would be unfortunate to have an over-reliance on emergency services aided by these tools.
Offer a few free texts a year and then charge like 5 bucks to text for a day or something.
Also, with 5ft of snow coming down, I have my doubts an iPhone would be able to reach out and touch a satellite. It'll be interesting to see some tests.
1. You first field dress it - cut from sternum to tail and pull the entrails, leaving them in a pile in the woods for scavengers. That takes your elk from 700 lbs (you hope) to ~450 lbs.
2. Quarter it and hang the 4 ~100lbs quarters high in a tree safe from bears and wolves (but not cougars) and carry them out one at a time using a backpack with a frame and hip belt. Be sure to carry the prime cuts (backstraps) out with the first load. Watch for predators on the return trips.
3. It's becoming more common, too, to fully butcher the animal in the field, removing the bones, which reduces the load to haul down to about 200 lbs. The skin, ivory, and head (if you want those) add some weight.
A Jet Sled in 2" of snow makes it surprisingly easy to haul an awful lot of elk and gear. As long as you're going across flat ground or downhill, that is - uphill is no fun at all.
A whitetail here in Michigan is much easier, even a big one is only about 100 lbs after field dressing. You just lay it on a drag/tarp or in a sled (or, if you don't care about the skin staying pristine and aren't going over super rocky terrain, just tie a rope to the antlers and front legs) and drag it out.
The big goal is to not puncture intestines, as they are gross and contain bacteria that will spoil the meat.
To skin it, I started at a back leg, just making a cut, pulling the skin up, and seeing it's connected to muscle by very soft fat. You can pull on the skin, slice the fat, and the animal basically unwraps. You want to keep hair off the meat because again, bacteria.
Front quarters are easy as there's no bone joint. They pop off quckly. Rear are harder, you need to find and cut the ligament(?) that holds the leg in the hip.
Then, I put about half the elk on a children's sled, and pulled it (mercifully downhill or level) about 1.5 miles. Then, I went and got the other half. She was a cow, so no antlers to carry.
Then, I hung all the meat in a frienda garage for about 2 days, took it home in several coolers, and fought off my dog while every evening for 4 evenings, I separated the muscle groups, and/or chunked meat to grind (lower quality meat gets turned into hamburger or sausage), vacuum sealed eveything, and froze it.
I'm originally from Rhode Island, and this is only my third animal (first was a deer, then an antelope) so it was pretty overwhelming.
I've been solo hiking, running, kayaking, and biking in areas without cell service since before cell phones were things people carried.
Haven't needed emergency search-and-rescue in 20 years, so it's just never seemed like a good investment...that's $3600 I could have 'wasted' on a service I've never needed. But I would probably buy and carry an InReach if they offered use it now, pay later plans. I don't carry a PLB, because that would mean paying for insurance, and I'd more likely need a lift from my brother in a side-by-side than a helicopter from the sheriff's office (and the ruinous costs that would entail....
I plan to wear my Fenix 6 Pro for another 10 years, but if they came out with a version with InReach 2-way texts my wife would buy it RIGHT NOW, express shipping, not even a thought of waiting for Christmas.
On the other hand, that's $3600 of profit for Apple/Garmin/Iridium/Globalstar/Spot that they're loathe to leave on the table until the one time in 20 years when I really need it.
That said, it's not a bad thing to carry in your car, as there are plenty enough dead spots that would likely be covered by packet radio. It's just a lot less clear how to get help.
It's just $16 a month and there are other uses besides SOS; like texting to say you'll be late but everything is fine or that you've decided to stay another night. You can even get weather forecasts which is pretty huge if you ever do multi-day trips. Besides all that, carrying an InReach could one day save someone else's life.
The most important benefit it gives me (and my wife) is peace of mind. I find it worth every penny.
https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-9555/
People will happily spend $700 on an Arcteryx jacket and $400 boots but won't buy an Iridium handset. I truly don't understand.