White roof on FJC...

Zmtking

New member
Hi everyone. I was reading the thread about the white roof on the FJC in the FJC section of these forums. The talk was mostly about whether or not it was liked, and keeping with tradition. Someone had also mentioned that the white roof, and brighter colors would be a good visual in an rescue effort if someone were to get lost or stuck out in the elements.

With personal safety in mind, and as nobody else brought this up in that thread I thought it would make a good background for writing on too. You could use rocks/sticks/mud...to write S.O.S., or 911 providing you were in such a position that you could do so beneficially.

I then started thinking about if anyone already brings white sheets with them while out wheeling as a standard safety item for this or other purposes. I will now do so just in case as plain white sheets can serve mutliple purposes, and easily stowed.

Your thoughts?
 
Register to hide this ad
White is fairly easy to see from an aircraft particularly against a foliage background, but there are many things that can appear white, like sun reflecting off water for example. And a white roof/sheet in the snow is more like camo than anything else.....
The best color anywhere in the world at any time of day is bright (or fluro) orange. Like what hunters have to wear.
I'm a qualified air observer for search and rescue, and in my experience the easiest things to see and things that attract attention are brightly colored objects (orange, red, yellow, blue, white), un-natural shapes like crosses and triangles etc, and movement. Fire is also great since the smoke can be seen in daylight and the actual fire can be seen at night time. Some of the searches I have been on where my aircraft has found the target, I've seen a very large 'help' written in the sand on a remote beach (just like in the movies!), a lost hiker who displayed the bright yellow lining of her sleeping bag so it could be seen, and maritime flares. I've also seen a group of people waving their arms and large tree branches in the air. There was no wind that day so seeing a small clump of trees moving all around really stood out.
Dont bother writing 911 since everybody knows the number, the number doesn't work everywhere and there's just as much chance of reading it as 116 as there is as 911. Emergency vehicles and park ranger vehicles almost always have ID numbers witten on the roof too, so it doesn't definitely indicate a problem. SOS and HELP are certainly your best bets.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
278,316
Messages
3,554,120
Members
248,016
Latest member
Advally Service

Trending content

Back
Top