Originally Posted By: falcon5000
"PLBs currently are prohibited from having rechargeable batteries."

Doug, rechargeable or replaceable? If McMurdo can have replaceable batteries,can ACR have the same thing or is that strictly a US law? Also is there any way they can put a external adapter to allow plug in to a car battery, solar, battery pack or so forth to work around the law?
http://www.rei.com/product/791973

I had waited for ACR to come out with something awhile back but due to how slow they are to come to production with things I ended up with the fast find 210 and like it except for the cap design. The ACR looks very nice and I like the design and when it's time to replace mine for batteries I may get one unless McMurdo Counters this design by making a removable battery and a a better design of the cap which holds the antenna to allow for multiple use, which really is a small design change to counter this design. I hope ACR will look into seeing if there is a way to add replaceable batteries and or external power jack as a workaround before release of production. They had said first quarter release, I'm thinking very late 1st quarter or slip into second quarter at the very least. With a replaceable battery pack, a extra battery can be modified to accept external power, I did that with the steripen and other devices to where I can hook it to a regulator and a solar cell.

Anyway, thanks for the update and hopefully the competition between the different manufactures will continue to lead to better products.


Replaceable is allowed, rechargeable is not, at this time. All the batteries are replaceable, but only the one model of McMurdo is readily user replaceable. You will note that the follow-on generation is NOT replaceable. It caused many issues and was not deemed to be a success or an an important feature. Nobody else has done it for good reason.

External power is not allowed. PLBs are self-contained distress beacons that are designed to sit around for years and then work when needed.

Some manufacturers want to be able to use rechargeable batteries for power density reasons (IOW so they can be made smaller), BUT so far the U.S. has balked and see no signs of that changing soon. It is revisited regularly and at some point I expect it will be allowed, when other issues are addressed. Most critically, the idea is they need to work reliably and even when ignored for long periods of time.

To date, the market has not demanded these features. PLBs are evolving and there are other devices, such as SPOT, that address some of these issues, but all represent compromises. You pick the compromise that works best for you.
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