At times of dangers at sea, the captains use the typical flares, which can be waived during the night times to make sure that rescue team reach the distressed vessel at the earliest.
Changing times!!!
At present the Coast Guard is making an attempt to take the fire out of the flare. Instead they have planned to develop a distress signal which doesn’t need any pyrotechnics.
Reason to say ‘no’ to the fire flares!!!
As many as searches and rescue operations takes place near the land. It means that most of the times, the Coast Guard look towards the shoreline that is filled with various kinds of visual distractions such as smokestacks, cars, street lights and lots of other lights. Amidst these light emitting objects it becomes very difficult to spot a flare.
“What we need is something that’s conspicuous — that stands out from everything else in the environment,” said Vinny Reubelt a scientist at the United States Coast Guard Research and Development Center in New London. He is working on a prototype LED flare, which would be programmed to flash at a specific rate using colors easily seen by human eyeballs.
Anita Rothblum, another scientist at the centre has worked on the development of the technology in making the LED flare more “conspicuous” rather than a traditional flare. She briefed that the team had arrived at making a two-color flash pattern. “This way you’re seeing something that flashes four times as cyan. Three times as red-orange. Then goes back to cyan. Back to red-orange,” Rothblum said. “There’s nothing else out there that looks like that.”
Added advantage is that the LED flare would be battery-powered one. Besides, it would last longer than the pyrotechnic flares which is to burn out in minutes.
Vinny Reubelt said in field tests so far, the colored-flashing pattern of the LED devices made them more detectable than traditional flares, despite being less bright.
Scientists based in Coast Guard feel positive on the prototype would lead a better industry standard for LED flares — also hoping to see them very soon in the market.
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Source: WNPR News
