But that's not always going to be practical.

You're much better off carrying a small bag containing a wig, lipstick, and a set of falsies. After all, the only person you can really rely on is yourself.

LOL Art and Andrew,

Now I have to revise my EDC again. But how in the world am I going to explain carrying falsies to my wife...

You have a duty of care for yourself and others that you go on a trip with, it is externally important to inform someone of every trip you make. Doing this you have started you rescue process before you have even left on your trip, if you have not reported your return at a prearranged time the authorities can be informed that you have not returned and have some idea of the area you are in.

The fact is any S&R assets used in locating you will investigate anything that is unnatural or unusual that stands out from the environment.

The major problem for air to ground search operations is for the air asset to see the casualty. Many people think that it is easy to see someone on the ground from the air but this is not the case, even with a casualty in an orange survival bag and the air asset can find it very hard to spot the target even if they have grid coordinates for the casualty.

Any ground to air markers need to be large and stand out from there environment, these are V, X, N, Y and arrow. There is an international legal requirement that every seaman and airman know these signals and that they have a copy of these signals in their on-board manuals. The problem is that some people that see these signals but are not aware of an incident do not make a mental connection that it is a distress signal and often just think that’s unusual” and think nothing more of it. This is a problem with many written regulation, people know them but don’t recognise them in real life unless they have had prior experience or been told to look out for them.

I have experienced this whilst walking in the mountains, I heard a whistle being blown whilst walking on a well used footpath, other walkers on the path must have heard the whistle but I was the only person to respond until I mentioned to a group following me that someone was blowing a whistle. I have also read and I think it was on here, of someone lighting three fires as a signal which was ignored until a passenger plane reported to ATC.

If you plan to use passive ground to air signals its best practice to combine them with active signals too.

Thanks for the tip re having a young lady along with you, I often walk with a very attractive friend and I am a big fan of multi use survival items but I wont be telling her of her secondary use she will never have anything else to do with me!

I had a C 130 leak fuel in the hanger while on midwatch.

I never saw a helicopter refuse to slow down or take notice.

Bad Coast Guard helicopter, bad,bad.

I always thought a kite would be a darned good signaling aid. I have a parafoil type kit (no frame) that goes almost vertical so easily. I would imagine putting a strobe on the kite and sending it a thousand feet into the air might not be a bad way to signal at night, and using the same kite in the daytime might also be useful. That kite and the line all fit in a little nylon bag about the size of a sandwich sized ziploc. I also figured that during the day you could blow up a bag of balloons and tie one off on the line every 10 feet or so. That'd be hard to miss in open country. Not so good in heavy woods, but then you have plenty of fuel to make smoke and fire signals with.

There was an ETS thread discussion several years ago that discussed kites, IIRC it was was an inflatable type of kite that was sold in several sizes, radar reflective, primarily for boating use. I could see some value in it, but was leery of the inflatable getting punctured. I've seen several parasail type kites that would easily do what you suggested with the strobe.
Regards,
Comanche7

Yeah, once you get them up over a few hundred feet, they stay up almost perpetually during the day. We did that once on a 1000 yard spool, and it tooks us over two hours to retreive the kite. We were using 80 lb dacron line and I figured the string weight would eventually be a factor, but it just kept taking line, and would've continued had we let it. The kite was just a speck in the sky to us.

i just finished reading Sleeping Island by PG Downs.its about a 1936 canoe trip to a Hudson Bay tradeing post on the then unmapped Nueltin Lake ..even the bush planes had a very hard time finding it.in a nutshell Downs gets to the post which is out of everything and waiting for a long overdue re-supply by air.when the plane is finally spotted it's far to the west and going in big circles tryng to find the post--a fire is lit and brush tossed on,the pilot sees that and lands.. OK..the point of this post--Downs said that the thin ribbon of smoke against the dark background of trees had saved the day.the pilot made for the smudge and did not see the buildings untill he was over them..so maybe simple,easy and available is just as good if not better that "high tech"

There is the Sky-Alert Parafoil Rescue Kite

http://www.landfallnavigation.com/-skite.html

Yes Canoedogs, and B.C. Hydro still tells their linemen that if they are lost to light one big fire instead of three.

Not only is the one fire easier to look after, but you can make it big enough that the smoke punches through the thermal inversion layer and rises as a column instead of spreading out and looking like another fog bank.

They are actually told to find a lonely spruce. One that is isolated on an island is preferred. Then stuff the lower branches full of kindling and torch it.
They figure the forest service will locate that flare for them and send somebody to check it out.
The tree does not have to be dead to burn but the drier it is the better it will flare.

It is real good to have somebody looking for you though. A lot of people would never make the connection between a signal and somebody in trouble.
So have a travel plan like a flight path with a return time handed in before you take off intro the great unknown, right.