Weatherdock - World´s first VHF locator which can be dropped out of a flying aircraft

After having found various solutions on how to rescue people lost overboard as fast and effective as possible, especially sailors and staff members on commercial and pleasure vessels, but also the German Federal Armed Forces or the Dutch marine who got equipped by Weatherdock, they found a solution on how to track objects, sailors or even oil spill in the open sea that gets carried away by currents and therefore hardly can get found again for clearance after a few hours.

Thanks to Weatherdock, tracking flotsam is as easy to track as all of Weatherdock´s products make that promise within their name.

Thus, the easyAIRDROP as the product is called, was developed. As the name suggests, this device is to be dropped out of an airplane or helicopter over the area that shall be tracked. Because of the polystyrene housing the buoy floats e.g. in the middle of the oil spill or close to the object to be marked and gets driven away likewise. As soon as the “AIRDROP” touches the water surface an automatic triggering function opens the straps attached to the buoy and holding it together to release the antenna that unfolds and uprights itself to have maximum transmission power and range. At the same time, the internal VHF rescue locator gets activated and starts transmitting a position or an alert message (configurable by the user) with its current position. This message is updated every minute. Since the unit is using AIS technology at all vessels and airplanes in the surrounding area will receive the signal.

Moreover, even after hours with heavy weather conditions such as a strong breeze and rainfall that make rescue missions impossible during that time period and no matter how far away from the calculated position it got drifted away, the object or the environmental pollution can still be found again very easily and get resolved.