Ninety-five percent of Americans over 25 years of age have email but many of them don’t check their email daily—and no wonder. Americans receive an average of 80 emails each day and if your inbox is like mine, roughly half of them are junk that wasn’t automatically kicked out by the spam detector on your phone or computer. Miss a day or more and many messages will never be seen or opened.
I got an email this morning from Beacon Registration this morning. Initially I thought it was just more junk; but luckily, I opened anyway and it turned out the message was the every-other-year reminder from NOAA’s Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) program that my Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) registration needed to be renewed.
For anyone not familiar with what a PLB, look it up. There are dozens of places that will explain the details about PLBs, including a column I wrote for Outdoor News a couple years ago which read, in part, a PLB “can be activated to send a distress signal to satellites and rescue authorities. These devices are designed to work in remote areas where cell phone coverage is not available.”
I’m sure other blogs or columns you’ll find will dive much deeper into the technology, if you are interested. Most of them will likely mention that when you get a PLB, it will need to be registered with SARSAT so the agency knows your phone number, email as well as emergency contacts and their information. Few of them mention the registration needs to be updated at least biennially to ensure the names, numbers and other contact info is correct.
A PLB is a small, radio transmitter about the size of a cell phone that only does one thing. Push its button and it sends a signal to satellites orbiting in near space. Electronics inside the satellite pinpoints the location of the PLB, recognizes the owner of the PLB and sends that info to rescue services. It doesn’t say you’ve fallen from a tree stand, your boat is sinking or any of the dozens of other problems that could have occurred.
The first thing the rescue service, (Coast Guard, police or whomever) will do is call you or your emergency contacts to help them understand why your PLB might have been activated. Understanding the problem helps the rescuers know what to expect and what they will need when responding.
Registering is free. A false alarm can come with a fine or a bill sent by the rescue agency—and a fair number of the alerts received turn out to be inadvertent or accidental false alarms.
If you are one of those who often lose or miss emails, the biennial notice to update your PLB registration may have been bypassed. If it’s been a while since you registered or re-registered your PLB, go to: https://beaconregistration.noaa.gov. While you are at it, change the batteries.
