A powerful flashlight with a strobe or SOS mode is hard to beat for nighttime signaling to helicopters. I carry this one http://www.4sevens.com/product_info.php?cPath=297_305&products_id=2507 .

Doing SAR, we routinely flashed our locations with signal mirrors by day and ACR/4F strobes at night, and the combination worked flawlessly. On one occasion, when my buddy and I stumbled onto a serious accident in the back country, we used a large bonfire to guide the helicopter in by night. At 174 lumens, your light ought to get the job done in style.

What really helps is bright colors and motion. Also, the pilot really wants to know the direction and velocity of wind on the ground at the LZ, so smoke of some sort is welcome. The standard practice is for the individual directing the helo to stand with back to the wind.

That's how I roll too. I wear a slim ArcTeryx waistpack that rides just below my bellybutton. That way it stays in the same place if I'm wearing a light daypack with no waistbelt or an overnight pack with full waistbelt. I wear it regardless of the outing type or duration.

In the "belly pack" I have:

- 1 liter water bag with 8 chlorine dioxide tablets
- mini fire kit
- Petzl e-Lite mini headlamp
- a 2-person AMK heatsheet blanket
- signal mirror
- whistle
- couple of safety pins
- 5 feet of duct tape
- neon pink flagging tape
- Leatherman tool
- SPOT-2 unit, with Type I dummy cord
- lip balm
- 50 foot piece of Kelty dyneema cord (1 ounce!)
- an energy bar
- slim 3"x5" Rite-In-The-Rain notebook
- Fisher space pen
- Suunto M3 global needle compass, with Type I dummy cord

It's a pretty good setup even though I am a gram counting fanatic. There is further gear in my pack but the idea is for the belly pack to have the bare minimum to get by.

The weather was bad when they were looking for him. In the Cascades, clouds right down to the ground is more the rule than the exception. I can't see that a mirror is much good without the sun.

Helicopters aren't likely to fly at night in cloud cover, so you're wasting your zillion-cp flashlight.

If you've got low cloud cover at night, a signal fire might not be seen, esp if the conditions are poor enough that the choppers aren't flying. With low clouds during the day, the smoke hangs along the ground, difficult to distinguish from clouds or fog.

If you're in a narrow canyon on a clear night, it still might be tricky for aircraft to see your fire, or your flashlight, due to the narrow angle of vision.

Missing WA Trooper sorry to have caused trouble

So, this brings up the question of HOW to signal in poor weather and poor visibility conditions.

As has been said before, you need to prepare for the worst possible conditions, not the best possible conditions.

Sue

Hmm. Good point. The article said that he could see the helicopters. I assumed clear weather, but it may have been overall quite overcast.

I wonder what his SPOT or PLB (it's not clear which he really had) was doing at the time?

I guess in low viz, a PLB with it's 121.5 MHz homing signal really beats a SPOT. Alternatively, a HAM radio with a GPS could be pretty handy.

HJ

It would be informative to see the official report, which ought to give specifics and answer some of the questions raised here.. Just a couple of comments - a signal mirror will work, although with diminished range, in overcast conditions. Just how thick were the clouds?

At night, or in bad weather, a fire is one of the best signals. The light, if spotted, is quite distinctive, and the smoke, especially, will bring searchers to you. I have followed smoke upstream on a couple of occasions during damp searches.

According to a poster on nwhikers.net who said he was a relative of the lost hiker (sanderson), the Trooper carried a SPOT, not a PLB. And while a report might be interesting to us outside SAR community, I've never seen one posted after an incident.

Nice! Smart thinking, Glock! I'd love to see pics in an on-your-body-PSK thread.

In bad weather, the choppers will probably not be flying. However there is almost always ground SAR out searching. Even the fire may not be seen or the smoke spotted, the scent carries. Given that, I would think that most SAR who smell wood fire scent where there normally should not be, would factor this in the search pattern to determine if possible, the direction of where the scent is coming from.

Super close to what I do too. I'd say Great minds but I am a plagerizing fool. Oh wait, [right click, Print]