Archive for category Communications

So What is Red Ibex?

Jun 13

Posted by Rescue Response Gear in Causes, Communications, Faith, Uncategorized | No Comments

So what is Red Ibex Channel? How about Red Ibex Films? Great questions.. and we hear that a lot.

The ibex is an amazing animal that live at the heights… steep and rough terrain…excellent climbers and love fun. Incredibly social! And yes… they are a wild goat! The ibex is looked upon historically as an encouragement and one that bestows honor on others. The ibex understands it’s purpose. Strong willed, adventurous and loves family. The ancients would look in wonder, as the ibex “went on to the heights”… many understood the relationship of this incredible specimen of strength and the heavens.

It lives in places where you would think no animal could get without falling and breaking its neck; you would be frightened to see it sometimes, when it climbs up rough and narrow places, or jumps from one great rock to another. But God has given it just such a kind of foot as it needs; it has a small hoof, something like those of a sheep, excepting that it is hollow underneath, and has a sort of ridge around it by which the animal can cling to the rock, and so keep from slipping; “The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats”.

The heart and soul of RRG is to serve. The Red Ibex stand as a symbol of strength, endurance, service, courage, hope and faithfulness. We care deeply about how we interact with our friends. We endure to go to great lengths, to get the job done and right the first time. It doesn’t happen every time… we are human.

Oh… and the meaning of red? Passion and War. Life and Vitality.

Why do we do what we do? What is Critical and What isn’t?

Apr 5

Posted by Rescue Response Gear in Communications, Faith, Rescue and Rigging Training, Safety Equipment, Uncategorized | No Comments

One of the biggest and toughest questions I ask people (young, old or anywhere in between) is “what makes you tick?” The answer to this question will likely change from day to day or even hour to hour, if… you don’t really know. Identity and Destiny are critical components of life. Why? We are “Beings” and we have a Purpose.

So, like life, there are critical components to rigging as well. What are they? We could list a few general concepts first… The Rigging and or Rescue Equipment, Rigging Knots, Force, Vectors, Angles, Anchors, Personal Rope Skills, Assessing Risk. I might go with the last one… Assessing Risk. However, this too has some interesting dynamics. How does one properly assess risk? Through experience right? This brings in knowledge and understanding…which is wisdom. Prudence finds her way into all this.

Our ability to properly gauge “a situation” is defined by what we know about the gear we have, the quantitative physics we are standing with, time, urgency, our skill set, courage and of course… experience.

Risk assessments are generally considered both subjective and objective in nature. Gathering information, evaluating that information, and then recognizing what must be done with that information. The reason the event is evident is because either, something went wrong with someone else’s ability to understand risk, or a completely unseen collision with time and space. Either way, we need to understand what happened first, before we can even take Step One. Understanding is Key.

Many people ask me, after I ask them… “what makes me tick”? Engaging with people at a root level and watching their “light go on” is what I get charged about. Why? Because we are “beings” and that means we have a core and dynamics revolve all around us. Engagement is simply fascinating to me and rigging for work and or rescue is of the same “stream”. Beings are involved at every corner of what we do and who we are. Enjoy the ride. Engage. And know you are created for a reason and purpose… No different than the systems you are building.

PS… The root of the classic answer to the question for me… 1. Physics! I love physics and life is physics and physics is a relationship. 2. Our lives are meant to impact every person we meet and encourage them for amazing things.

Peace

Lance

Ropes Are Relational

Mar 18

Posted by Rescue Response Gear in Arborist & Tree Climbing, Communications, Rope & Cord, Services & Education, Uncategorized | No Comments

What about rope? What is rope? What is rope for? Well, I can’t answer all of this, but what I can do is shed some light on what rope is to us. It is a connection. A composite of fibers, woven together in such a way as to add adventure into all we do. What? OMG… Where is this going? We are talking relationships.

Safety rope, rescue rope, working rope, “fast” rope, water rescue rope, rigging rope, utility rope… it can go on and on. Ultimately, rope is a fabrication of fibers blended together to produce a re-action to an action or connective benefit. Sometimes the rope is never used, sometimes the rope is used all the time (as in under tension), used to anchor something, bring up or let down something… what about the psychological aspects of having rope? Just knowing you have rope with you makes the adventure more “doable” (lead climbing or as in mountaineering, attaching people together); for some reason, soloing is just something our minds just do not want to deal with. No one really wants to be alone.

We have been working with Sterling Rope for a very long time, our gear company (Rescue Response Gear), our video crew (Raven Media and Red Ibex Films) and now our training group (Rigging Lab) have enjoyed the fruit of technology and relationship. Rope is very much a relationship. The braiding system allows the relationship of user and product to accomplish the adventure. They co-labor with each other. The heart and soul of a climber, mountaineer, arborist, rope access technician, all require different relationships. And like human relationships, not all rope is created to do the same thing for everyone.

So that being said, ask the questions of what, why, how and purpose. Enjoy the world of relationship and you will quickly understand more clearly… “ropes are relational”.

Peace

Lance

Digital Avalanche Rescue Locates Cell Phones

Dec 8

Posted by Rescue Response Gear in Communications, Ice & Survival | 2 Comments

A novel geolocation system makes use of signals from Galileo, the future European satellite navigation system, to locate avalanche victims carrying an avalanche transceiver or a cellphone to the precision of a few centimeters.

For many skiers and snowboarders, there is nothing quite like being the first to make tracks in the virgin snow, off the regular piste. But this can be a fateful decision, because the risk of avalanche is many times greater here. Once buried under a mass of snow, a person’s only hope of survival is if their location can be pinpointed swiftly. If not rescued within half an hour, their chances of being found alive diminish rapidly. Victims stand the best chance of being saved if the uninjured members of their group start searching for them immediately. However, the buried victim needs to be wearing an avalanche beacon.

“In the experience of rescue teams not everyone actually carrys beacons,” says Wolfgang Inninger of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML. “However, nearly everyone has a cellphone. This is why we decided to enhance our automatic geolocation system that works with Galileo, the future European satellite navigation system.”

To do so, two new components have been added to the ‘avalanche rescue navigator’ ARN: a cellphone location function and software that calculates the position of the buried victim on the basis of local measurements. Starting from the approximate place where the victim is thought to be lying under the snow, the rescuers measure the field strength of the signal transmitted by the cellphone or beacon at three to five reference points. The system then uses a highly precise calculation algorithm to pinpoint the source of the signal, indicating with high probability the location of the buried victim.

In this kind of situation, the position relative to the rescue team’s starting point is more important than the absolute position relative to global coordinates, which may be subject to measurement inaccuracies. This gives the rescuers immediate information on the direction and distance from their present location at which the victim can be found.

For their development work on the system, the researchers are using the GATE Galileo test and development environment in Berchtesgaden, where transmitter antennas installed on six mountain peaks simulate the Galileo signals. The researchers intend to combine these signals — and the real ones, after 2012 — with signals from existing satellite navigation systems such as the American GPS and the Russian Glonass, and to add signals for error estimation and correction.

The project is being implemented by a consortium of regional companies, institutes and universities in collaboration with the Berchtesgaden mountain rescue service and the police, and is being sponsored by the German Aerospace Center DLR.

Not much in the way of Galileo links are available. Some news is better than no news, but if you find something, please pass it on. As rescuers, we love this type of news. Stay tuned for more on this technology.