Reading a bunch of the ETS survival stories, it seems to me that most if not all of them could have been solved rather quickly if the survivor had used a cheap FRS walkie talkie that's available in just about every retail electronics store now.

FRS radios have limited range on the ground because their 900 mhz waves don't deal well with obstacles, but given a clear line of sight path, say to an airborne rescuer, they can cover considerable distances, even tens of miles. The smaller models weigh just a few ounces and run on standard AAA or AA penlight cells. They are far less expensive and cumbersome than PLB's. Just about everyone can carry one.

So this suggests a few very simple procedures:

1. Designate FRS channel 9 as an emergency communications channel for remote areas, similar to how CB channel 9 was used for roadway emergencies. "Privacy codes" (subaudible tone squelch) should of course be turned off when the radio is used that way.

2. Equip SAR crews with FRS-capable radios and SAR aircraft with external antennas to improve coverage and enable direction finding. External antennas are illegal for civilian FRS use but it should be feasible to obtain an FCC waiver specific to SAR users.

3. SAR crews looking for a specific person should broadcast a message saying so, at least once every 3 minutes, maybe using a recorded message so the SAR operator doesn't have to keep talking into the radio. That means if the survivor is trying to conserve battery power by leaving the radio turned off, he can turn it on for a few minutes every hour and receive the broadcast message and respond to it. Of course if the survivor sees or hears aircraft, he should turn on his radio immediately.

4. Random civilian aircraft should also listen on FRS channel 9 just as they listen on 121.5 mhz and so forth, so they can hear if someone is in trouble.

5. Various technical improvements can be thought up but the above is the basics.

Thoughts?