I am still not certain where on your PFD vest you are going to put a stove, but the little horn should make a colorful addition sure to be admired by your comrades.

The bag is squeezed tightly under the arm, and there is 3-4 pipes that the sound comes out of. I am guessing the different ranges of the pipes?

Pop your belt?

"What's that noise?"

"Oh, just ignore it. Some clown got lost . . ."

Firing a rifle makes a lot of noise but I'm not so sure it would get anyone's attention. It's just too common in the bush. IME most people, especially casual hikers, are not going to investigate who is doing the shooting and why. More the opposite - it tends to signal everyone else to keep clear of the area because you might easily walk into some trigger happy hunter's sights.

Now, shots fired in threes might be different but then you'd need to sacrifice quite a bit of ammunition. Most people who hike in the bush don't carry a firearm and even the ones that do rarely pack lots of ammo.

One other alternative I haven't seen mentioned yet - you can make a surprisingly effective horn from birch bark. Takes some practice and a bit of time but it works.

A quality whistle is tough to beat because it is reasonable, reliable, and reusable.

In a situation where you're calling for help, you need to be able to do so repeatedly, without expending a lot of energy.

Metal horns would stick to you in cold weather, and even if cold weather weren't a problem, unless you're a regular brass instrument player in the real world, I imagine your lips would get tired long before anyone investigated your strange sounds.

The same thing probably goes for pots and pans if you happened to have them along: even a small thing like banging two pots together can become taxing on the arms if you do it long enough.

Using a gun as a noise signal is foolish in my opinion: those bullets have to come down somewhere, and I believe they would be put to better use against game in a survival situation.

All things considered, a plastic whistle that weighs hardly anything and can easily be secured to your person and easily used over and over again makes it an attractive survival device.

It may be that there is a better whistle waiting to be designed -- one that transmits on a variety of frequencies: a low signal to attract interest at a distance, along with the shrill pitches we are accustomed to hearing as a call for help.

I agree with the whistle and that was what prompted the thread. Other than beating on something like a pot or the sheet metal of a machine I could not think of many other sound makers a person needing help might have with him.
I think the range of ideas shows how hard it is to come up with something better than the simple whistle as a carry along device.
Some of the ideas were interesting though and in some situations they might have merit.

Like I said in the post, just throw some ideas around and see where we get.

Warning! Mindless, sarcastic 4-am posting!


Uh... a pack of teenage girls on cell phones, a few three-year olds that have missed nap time, an obnoxiously loud soundtrack on a boom-box/ghetto-blaster/portable stereo.

Lessee, what else gets my attention and drives me nuts in day-to-day life?

A random slow driver on the freeway.

OK, back OT, I think whistles are popular due to size/sound ratio. Making a drum-like instrument would maybe work. Some of those really small firecracker strings might work (good size/sound) but they're a fininte commodity, unlike a whistle. Cowbell might work, but pretty heavy (plus they'd start wondering why there's a cow up some cliff).

That's all I have right now.

MORE COW BELL

ROTFLMAO!!!!!
-Blast