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Following the discussion about PLBs and
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AIS and surface separation, I thought
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I'd show you how I deal with the issue.
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I've got the first generation of the
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Nautilus, the diver radio. So, not only
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is it an IIS, but it's also got a VHF
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radio in there. It's relatively
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reasonably sized. It lives on the
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waistband of my rebreather, as you can
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see here, and so is always there when I
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need it. Now, there's a few issues with
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this. The first of all is it is an AIS
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radio. So, it isn't a satellite device.
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It won't communicate with satellites.
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So, you need receiving stations, whether
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they're uh aircraft, whether they're
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helicopters, whether they're boats in
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the area to pick up on it. VHF also has
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some really significant range
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constraints, particularly if you're
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transmitting from the surface of the
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sea. So, you won't reach anything very
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far. Now, for me, that's absolutely
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fine. Most of the diving I do is around
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the British Isles where there's lots of
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coverage for those that those kind of
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things. If you're somewhere more remote,
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then you definitely need a PLB. The
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second thing with this one is the diver
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radio is actually quite old. So, the
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other one that I've got, this white one,
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I bought as a backup. I tried to upgrade
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the firmware and I've managed to brick
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it. So, this is going to be I'm going to
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be using the Nautilus trading program to
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get myself a new one of these, the newer
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NextG Lifeline. And because that's going
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to be quite smaller, that's going to
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probably end up living in my dry suit.
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So, you might ask why I don't use a PL
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because clearly they are superior to
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these AIS devices. I guess there's two
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main reasons. One is that they're more
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expensive and some of them like the gin
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in reach come with requirement to have a
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subscription and the second thing is
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although most of them are waterproof on
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the surface what they aren't able to do
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is withstand the pressure at the kind of
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depths I'm diving. So the Nautilus for
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instance will go down and survive a dive
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to my kind of depths. If I wanted to do
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that with a PLB, I would need to buy a
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another a canister for it. And everybody
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I know who's done that has somehow
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managed to flood their device and kill
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it, which is clearly very expensive.
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Anyway, I hope that explains why I've
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made the choices that I've made. Hope
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it's useful. But I think the important
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message is all divers need to worry
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about surface separation. You need to
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have it as part of your plan, and you
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need to have devices that will help you
