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To give ourselves (and our loved ones) a peace of mind while we embark on our hiking and other potentially ‘dangerous’ activities in Latin America, we decided to purchase a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). We recommend this for anyone that will be going on non-guided hikes in more remote areas.
A PLB is a SOS device which sends out your location to the search and rescue satellite system when activated, and will enable the emergency responders to find and rescue you. The PLB will be able work in remote areas where you may not have cellphone coverage. Note that the PLB should only be used in grave life-or-death situations and that you have to foot the bill for the rescue eventually.
Figuring out the process of properly obtaining one in Singapore was harder than we thought and information online was fairly limited. Here’s a detailed step by step guide on how we obtained our PLB, we took around 2 months in total from first contact with the reseller, so give yourself ample time.
1. Purchase a Personal Locator Beacon from an authorized reseller
We bought our ACR ResQLink from Jason Marine for SG$583. We also contacted another Pamarine which sold the Ocean Signal Rescue Me for SG$588. Please reach out to the resellers at least 2 months in advance as both of them did not have existing ready stock and had to order and ship from USA which took around 4 weeks.
2. Reprogramming to your country of residence
Our PLB came programmed for UK out of the box and had to be reprogrammed to Singapore (following our country of residence).
When I collected the PLB, the reseller just passed the box to me and did not provide any information regarding the programming and registration. I tried enquiring about it but the person did not seem to have much of a clue. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and hoped that the PLB was already programmed for Singapore.
We contacted the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and managed to get in touch with someone who was the most helpful in explaining what we needed to do. He explained that the PLB needed to be reprogrammed to your country of residence. This is so in the event that it gets activated, the nearest station will be able contact your country’s agency and your emergency contact, which will then be able to provide important information to verify the signal. For this reason, we suggest purchasing from a Singapore reseller, who will be able to reprogram the PLB to the correct country. You can check where your PLB is programmed to using this link and entering in the HexID.
Long story short, we contacted the reseller again and insisted that it was supposed to be reprogrammed by them. We went down to their office again so that their engineer could help us with the reprogramming.
3. Registering your Personal Locator Beacon
After the PLB was programmed to Singapore, we had to submit a registration form to CAAS and apply for license with IMDA. You can get in contact with both agencies quickly and the process is relatively straightforward, and your PLB is now ready for use!
We hope this guide was useful for anyone trying to figure out the PLB and that we will never have to use the PLB. Consider this SG$600 the price to pay for a peace of mind!
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