North Shore Rescue (NSR) can now perform rapid searches for missing people in the outdoors year-round — in mountains, wilderness and water — with the help of latest detection technology.
NSR has acquired a RECCO SAR Helicopter Detector, based on RECCO company’s renowned rescue technology applied for avalanche rescue.
NSR will stage a demonstration of the new technology for the media at Cypress Ski Area on Thursday.
The helicopter detector sends out a cone-like search signal which is returned by the passive RECCO reflector.
Flying at a speed up to 100 km/h, the detector scans the area beneath the helicopter with a corridor up to 100 m wide. The SAR helicopter detector can cover one square kilometre of forests, mountain terrain, rivers or shores within six minutes.
The detector is designed to search in the outdoors as opposed to dense urban areas.
