An idea that just might help someone stuck in the wilderness.

[geigy]

A couple friends of mine had the experience of one of them being injured, 5 miles or so from their car. Luckily one of them was able to hike out and bring help.

I was thinking about this a little, and it seems to me that it might be possible with a drone, and a phone, to send and receive a text from a remote canyon area with no cellular bars. On the ground, with no bars, initiate an SMS text message to a trustworthy friend from your phone that includes your GPS coordinates. Also send a text to your own 11 digit phone number (US subscribers). Attach the phone to your drone, and go high enough to (hopefully) get some cell phone coverage and send your text. Land your drone and verify that you received a copy of the message you sent to your own phone (this indicates that you succeeded in sending and receiving the text message). Wait a while, and relaunch to resend the message, and hopefully receive a reply to your text.

There are still some problems with this idea, of course, but perhaps others can help get around some of the remaining problems, and we could figure out a procedure that might help someone send and receive texts when they would not otherwise be able to.

 

[halifax]

That's a great idea. I work in the backcountry in Northern New England on land trust preserves of up to 15,000 acres. I'll give this a test when I'm back afield in July.

 

[tcope]

Devices already exist that do this much more effectively, easily and at less expense. One example would be the Spot satellite notification. It's $75 for the unit and $150 for a year or $15 for the month you'd use it. Far less than $1000 for the Mavic.

Your way presumes that you can't move to higher ground, that higher ground would get you a signal, that you carry the much larger Mavic and controller with you, that you can launch the Mavic from the location where you cannot move from, that you can attach your phone to the Mavic, etc. Spot requires you to press a button and your location is sent. You can also use Spot to check in and/or offer your tracking information. If someone can follow you on Twitter or Facebook, you would not need to pay a fee.

 

[halifax]

In my case, I travel with the Mavic on large properties with complex terrain, carrying the UAS for the purpose of image capture, adjunct to other work. If I was to get into a situation that is FUBAR, I could use the OP's methodology to reach out to get cell coverage that is otherwise not available. Find Friend is one app that we've used before to allow others to keep track of our location, and there is way too much loss of signal to count on it. These trips are small expeditions where we are out working for days. Last year, I did a boundary survey in NW New Hampshire that required us to walk 53 miles of boundaries, most of them at lower elevations with a lot of terrain shadowing.

All that said, I welcome other ideas. I was not familiar with Spot. Thanks!

 

[Kestrel]

I keep a Basic hand held gps device with me, it can track my course and I can set it to point me in the direction of where I want to go. Its one of the cheaper garmin hand helds for field use but it works.

 

[halifax]

I carry a Garmin 62S with a Garmin GLO to cover the Russian GLONASS sats.

 

[idiogenic]

Interesting idea, how do you ensure the message doesn't time out while the drone is ascending?

I wonder if you could also put your phone into hot spot mode and share your data connection to a second device in the ground.

 

[geigy]

Pretty sure the phone will queue them until it can send them. I've done SMS messages in the past and just waited until I got coverage when the message was sent.

I love the hot spot idea.
xkcd: Balloon Internet