Thank you, AkSAR! I appreciate your extensive post, but I am surprised that there are no SAR stats available. How busy is this place? A call every hour/ every three minutes? And no tracking of outcomes? I suspect that would b a good selling point.

After all, the situations today are a big improvement over the bad old days, pre 1985, when I was active in SAR. back then operations often started with notification that someone was overdue, often without any clear idea of plans. This seems to be the case less often these days.

yet I doubt that your black box, whatever iteration, is absolute security. Glitches can occur an delays may happen. I suspect that a lot of people depend on their black boxes to bail them out, when really the first source of aid is within their group and its resources. Help from outside may come faster than before, but it still isn't immediate, and bad outcomes are still possible.

Based on my experience in the NPS, if this were a govment operation, there would be stats up the gazoo