The Pieps Freeride seems pretty appealing to me as it is cheap, lightweight and designed for the sort of skiing I do (lift served).

However, seeing as I come from a mountaineering background, there is a possibility that in the future I will buy touring gear, and do some skiing that isn’t lift served, If I do this, will I regret not buying a multi antennae beacon?

At present I have limited beacon experience (1 practice search with an Ortovox X1). Based on that experience I think that I could quickly get the hang of slowly sweeping a single antennae beacon in front of me to pick up and follow a flux line.

So my question’s are..

1. If you turned up to go skiing with me, and I told you that I had a Pieps freeride, but not to worry because I had practised using it, how would you feel?

2. How easy is it to use a Freeride once you have spent some time getting used to it?

(I’m particularly interested in answers from people who have practiced searching with a Freeride).

Thanks.

If I was you I would feel chuffed as I will have a 3 antenna transceiver and find you slightly quicker.  If I was me I would feel cheated as I was getting a less than optimal search from a less quick unit that might give a little problem at the pinpoint phase of a search.

The Freeride is a good affordable unit with emphasis on affordable. A dual antenna unit is better, and 3 is much,much better.  Its like comparing a Pentium 1 running windows 95 to an iBook or Dual core processor on windows 7. Both work, - but..!

I don’t think too much about what transceiver people have, I prefer to work on the basis that everyone has a basic analog model. That means you tend towards safer skiing and thinking about the snow more.

What are the limits to the Pieps Freeride?

The antenna is smallish so it has less range, maybe 35 meters compared to 45 meters for other units. There have been some reports of the unit being hard to switch to search mode in very cold weather and the battery life indicator seems to have given some problems. More importantly people find the audio indicator confusing when you approach the victim (the frequency changes but not the volume) and the final cross search difficult. This is often the most stressful phase of a rescue. Maybe a firmware update will have fixed this. Experienced users who have trained well don’t seem to have problems finding a single victim.

On the plus side it is a small unit you can easily take whenever you go skiing, just in case.

My guide today had a Pieps Freeride and said it was fine as long as you actually know how to search and are not relying on it to “take you” to the victim. We didn’t discuss transmission range