UKC

I am a 17 year old design student from England doing my A Levels. For my final piece I have chosen to look at communication in climbing. Although there are many ways to communicate in the sport (such as verbal communication or walkie-talkie), I haven't found a specifically design climbing communication device so this is the area I am looking at.

I would really appreciate if people could fill out this quick survey to give me some data to use in my coursework and any comments / feedback / suggestions would be very helpful too!

Thanks!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GI6eMWbUG0Sd1qPh__1UBGBkz6IHEBMMAtBH840n2-...

In reply to sammwatkins:

Any one remember 'talking ropes'? Very late 1970s or early 1980s? Don't think they caught on much tho.

In reply to Dave Perry:


Had one of them. It kept saying "grow a pair, you wuss". Hated it. It's now a tow rope.

In reply to sammwatkins:

Yarding on the ropes a set number of times seems to have worked quite well for me.

In reply to sammwatkins:

Shouting or walkie talkie depends on venue. Sea cliffs and long pItches almost always walkie talkie. Short single pitch, shouting works just fine. Rope pulling also works well as well.

In reply to sammwatkins:

You've missed winter climbing off your survey.

It's common here (Canada) to use walkie - talkies and there is a specific FRS/GMRS one for skiing which could easily be used for climbing, which is simply a robust version of a family walkie talkie, but with a speaker mike you can use to change channels (BCA link).

I guess an integrated SPOT type device and walkie talkie would be handy in some applications, but I prefer to keep the functions separate as the current crop of walkie talkies are easily destroyed / dropped down the cliff.

There are also a lot of Chinese handy-talkies with cover VHF and UHF and can cover the GMRS frequecies and other bands. Though strictly speaking you'd need a ham licence to use these.

In reply to Blackmud:

What's the combination of pulls that says "I've been hit in the face by a large lump of ice and need to be lowered for some first aid"? It's this and similar divorce-inducing climbing communication incidents that has led me to using radios.

In reply to George Ormerod:

Can see that they would be useful sometimes but also something else to carry, that needs batteries...

In reply to sammwatkins:

I think the survey rather prejudges the response ! my personal preference is for visual communication (thumbs up, mainly) and not for yet another bit of kit to carry.

In reply to sammwatkins:

You should have a comment box.

personally IO don't think it'll work because:

1) walkie talkies have a limited amount of frequencies and you'll just get loads of climbers using the same channel (I use walkie talkies at work when writing electrical reports on buildings and we have other people using the same frequency. but in climbing we are all using the same calls and confusion could occur)
2) if you are climbing on some hard rock (dense rock that won't allow a signal to pass) the radio signal maynot get to the other person. if you are use to climbing with a regular climbing partner you can feel the rope what they want.
3)it is another piece of technology to go wrong.
4)climbers are tight and don't want to spend money.