What Color is Your Float or .....

H

hardee

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22 Cruiser
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Sleepy-C
Just found this on the Mustang site when I was checking on an inflation kit for my inflatable PFDs. Learn something new every day No red is not necessarily the best color for some things.

http://vimeo.com/29066467

Takes about 10 minutes. Could save a life.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
Good information. Thanks for posting.


H :wink:
 
The Fluorescent yellow greens have been used for some time on fire engines, rescue gear and vests because of its low light visibility On the water one has to also look at the contrast with sea conditions, as well as low light and "visibility"--fluorescent dye was used as a signal since at least before WWII for aviation raft spotting.

One of the issues in finding a person in the water, is that only his head will be above water, and there must be contrast with the sea--and considering the sea state--blue, green, whites are all out. In offshore racing there has long been a concern about color of foul weather gear--and also use of retroflective material, which will be easily spotted by the passing beam of a search light.

As shown by the helicopter IR images of the Italian cruise ship, Infrared technology is probably the best way to spot a person in the water.
 
A water activated strobe light attached to the vest is a particularly useful and well worth the roughly $30 cost.
 
If Santa is paying attention, I would really like a handheld FLIR on board. I agree, it is the BEST way to find a person in the water.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
Roger is correct--waterproof VHF, Strobe/flash light and PLB are essentials if you are offshore. Strobes have been required on ocean racers coats and life jackets for many years.
 
Roger is correct--waterproof VHF, Strobe/flash light and PLB are essentials if you are offshore. We do this routinely. Strobes have been required on ocean racers coats and life jackets for many years.
 
"strobes", until very recently, meant xenon flash-tubes, like in a camera flash.

Pulsed LEDs are now being called strobes...as much as technology moves on, some things are not equal, this being one of them.

I think the ACR FireFly xenon strobe is still the gold-standard for use on a vest.
 
Karl is certainly correct, and the unit I refer to is the ACR 1916 Strobe flashlight combo. It uses AA batteries (one of the criteria of my rescue gear is to use AA batteries, this includes VHF radio, and GPS, so that extra batteries can be carried in the ditch bag). It has a real Xenon strobe tube in one end and a flashlight in the other. It costs less than half of the price of the "fire fly"--which Is a great unit also. But the strobe specs are the same, and the "firefly" is a dedicated strobe. I feel that there are many times that a flash light is also a good idea.

Today many built in camera flash are no longer Xenon strobes, but are LED's. Then as Karl noted there are pulsed LED's. There are some advantages to the Pulsed LED-s including that code such as "S O S" can be sent. I have at least one pulsed strobe LED where I can vary the strobe function rate over a wide variety frequencies.
 
LEDs are wonderful, and my job in law-enforcement has seen them virtually replace xenon-strobes for vehicle lightbars in just the last four or five years.

Part of that push has been to lower the visual profile of the assembly, so that the cop-car has a lower-profile signature...many cop lightbars can now be mistaken for a ski or luggage rack when seen in driver's rearview mirrors...

But, the rise-time to peak-output, which is critical to human detection, still greatly favors xenon strobes. Basically, xenon gets attention quicker, even with similar output...this may be history in a few years, but right now, a xenon strobe is more likely to get you recognized under adverse lighting conditions.
 
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