Almost all current three-antenna avalanche transceivers have a feature that allows the signals of buried victims who have already been located to be suppressed. Especially when several people are buried close together, signal suppression makes it much easier to search for other buried victims. It has been known for a long time that there are always problems with this, especially with the devices of some manufacturers, and it is an old, albeit annoying, hat.
In the course of practical tests by DAV safety research, however, another safety-related problem has become known that was previously unknown: If the transmitters of several buried victims in an avalanche field are so far apart (> 60 m) that their signals no longer overlap, the error can occur that after pressing the marking function, the signals of the distant transmitter are also suppressed - and this transmitter can therefore not be found or it can lead to the erroneous assumption that there are no other buried victims!
Devices affected by the error come from the manufacturers Pieps and Arva: Pieps "DSP Sport" and "DSP Pro" as well as the Evo devices from Arva; "Evolution+", "Evo3", "Evo3+" and the "3 Axes" device.
The manufacturer Pieps, which belongs to Black Diamond, has already responded and is offering a free update of the firmware. The v1.5 update is available free of charge from all Pieps service centers and expert dealers.
Arva recommends the following procedure to solve or work around the problem:
If no more transmitters are found after marking (display shows CE), the marking must be canceled so that all transmitters are received again. In order to search for further buried victims, the corresponding search techniques must then be mastered in order to separate further existing signals.
However, since other manufacturers also repeatedly encounter problems with the marking function, DAV safety research generally recommends maintaining a maximum search strip width of 20 m for several buried avalanche victims in order to ensure that no buried victims are overlooked.
Source: BergUndSteigen / DAV safety research
