I've been upgrading my gear and I have a question on emergency whistles. What is a more important feature, volume, pitch or a combination?

Any whistle should be ok in an emergency, its the whistle patterns that communicate help, danger etc.
If you need to whistle for long distance, perhaps a hand held air horn.

Also good skill is being able to whistle with just your lips, as well as louder with your index and thumb fingers depressed on your curled tongue. That weighs nothing and loud!

Although in an emergency, assume you broke your good hand and cant whistle, my REI pack has a sternum strap chest buckle, that is orange, slim and doubles as a whistle.

Google search for: plastic buckle whistle
I could not find it on the REI website, but I have seen it in the store.

I typically think of the morse code SOS ... --- ...
But in whistle code, i keep it to three short bursts to signal distress

I searched bpl here and found a previous thread on whistles that may be of interest:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=58254


I lifted this from wiki for what its worth
"[]Mountain distress signals

The recognised mountain distress signals are based on groups of three, or six in the UK and the European Alps. A distress signal can be 3 fires or piles of rocks in a triangle, three blasts on a whistle, or three flashes of a light, in succession followed by a one minute pause and repeated until a response is received. Three blasts or flashes is the appropriate response.
In the Alps, the recommended way to signal distress is the Alpine distress signal: give six signals within a minute, then pause for a minute, repeating this until rescue arrives. A signal may be anything visual (waving clothes or lights, use of a signal mirror) or audible (shouts, whistles, etc.). The rescuers acknowledge with three signals per minute.
In practice either signal pattern is likely to be recognised in most popular mountainous areas as nearby climbing teams are likely to include Europeans or North Americans."

Edited by RogerDodger on 05/06/2012 11:32:25 MDT.

My 10 year old kids have a hard time blowing hard enough to get a loud blast from the Fox 40 mini. The regular 40 requires about 2/3 the breath pressure. However I find the Acme Thunderer to need1/4 of the regular 40's breath pressure and to sound about 1/3 louder.
My wife and kids think the 40 sounds about 5% louder though, so I'm guessing older ears can't hear the 3rd pitch some of the super whistles use. I also find the pea less whistles sound more like wind whistling through the trees, while the warbling that the pea provides is more attention getting in the back country.
I also tried the great big funny shaped whistle that says it uses the correct tone to carry the farthest. In the Eastern forests, and in the fall after the leaves had fallen, it carried about 5-10% father, but was so huge it would not be around my neck our in a pocket...

Edited by JohnG10 on 05/06/2012 11:59:33 MDT.

John,

I think your consideration of breath pressure is important. Who knows what state of health I may be in if I'm calling for help. The less breath pressure the better in my opinion.

Daryl

keep in mind if it is below freezing outside the pea in the whistle can freeze up from your spit, making the whistle until you can thaw it back out. So if you are ever planning to be out in freezing weather go pealess (for your whistle that is)

A couple of links to some whistle testing:

http://www.ysar.org.nz/technology/Testing.htm
The experiment at this link was to determine how far away one could hear a whistle being blown. Some interesting conslusions raised.

http://sgtmikessurvivaltips.blogspot.co.nz/2008/09/whistle-tests-part-two.html
This test tried to determine how easy each whistle was to blow to reach a particular sound level.

I like the simple methodology for the NZ whistle testing.

Informally, I've found that some "loud whistles" aren't very easy to hear or discern in the Lagunas and Sierra, and that whistles with a pea (when audible) are the most easily-recognized as a "human sound".

The "Jet Whistle" is an example of a whistle that's rated for very high db, but that is, frankly, pretty hard to hear in the forest and on Mission Bay in the wind. I think the pitch is so high that it's "wasted" in frequencies that are either inaudible to all but dogs ( ha ha ) or quickly absorbed into ambient, white noise.

I just did an canoe trip in the everglades and gave a lot of thought about whistles [more than I care to admit]. The point about breadth pressure is a really good one. I went with a standard Fox 40 [there are micro versions and flattened out safety versions]. These whistles are loud, carry long distances, don't require tremendous breadth pressure to function and get louder as you blow harder.

As far as dB goes most whistles I came across were pretty close to each other - I think the real issue is pitch and effort. However, this is just my two cents. Just as there are flashlight geeks there must be whistle geeks here on BPL. Hopefully you can find them.


-Brad

If you REALLY want to nerd out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_u4lsRbYY

up here there are birdies that are called the "fox birds" which chirp in the morning ... they sound just like the whistle which makes it useless for a few dawn hours