Ortovox, a leading manufacturer of avalanche safety gear, will upgrade its S1 avalanche beacon to S1+ by fall of 2011.
Despite the addition of the new technology the S1+ should look like the current S1 with maybe only few cosmetic changes.
The addition of the small “+” sign means that the Ortovox S1 will inherit smart transmitting antenna technology from Ortovox 3+ avalanche beacon.
This new technology allows a beacon to choose on which antenna to transmit its signal, therefore, actively creating a more favorable scenario for the searching beacon.
The Ortovox S1 is already leading the way for avalanche beacon innovations along with the Pieps DSP and Mammut Pulse. However, this new feature will significantly aid to its functionality.
The “+” technology
Until now, all beacons on the market (whether having one, two or three antennas) were sending their signal only through one antenna that was set by default to be the transmitting one.
This presented a problem when a victim (and its beacon) was buried in a “search unfriendly” position (more vertically than horizontally) because the transmitting antenna was sending its signal towards the sky instead of around the surface. This meant small range and long search times.
Ortovox addressed this avalanche safety industry shortcoming by releasing the Ortovox 3+ beacon in 2010. And in 2011, the 3+ will be joined by the S1+ to feature an intelligent position recognition system that analyses orientation of the two transmitting antennas and automatically switches to the optimal one.
With these new avalanche beacons there are two antennas to choose from to send a signal through instead of just one. And these two antennas lay in a 90 degree angle inside a beacon. Therefore, eliminating lots of bad transmitting positions which effectively gives a victim a higher chance of survival.
This advanced transmitting antenna technology affects only the transmit mode of the beacon and has no effect on the beacons search capabilities.