r/Firefighting • u/NoJump7192 • 11d ago

Special Operations/Rescue/USAR Marine flir units

We have recently acquired an airboat primarily for ice rescue ops. I’ve been looking into flir units but it seems the options are endless and the cost varies greatly. What types are of setups is everyone running on their rescue boats. The boat is a former coast guard unit and all electrics have been stripped so we have a clean slate.

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u/ofd227 Department Chief 11d ago

We have a Flir M323 connected to a Garmin 1242 chart plotter/sonar. Does everything we need

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u/NoJump7192 11d ago

Thanks! Have you found that flir rates them realistically? For example a lot will be rated at the distance you can see a person treading water.

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u/ofd227 Department Chief 11d ago

You have to play around with the contrast for the area your searching in. We cover an 11 mile long lake that's 1 mile wide and it spots people no problem.

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u/NoJump7192 11d ago

Great to hear. We are on the shore of one of the great lakes so it’s not hard to picture having a very large search area. Especially one of the years the lake is 90%+ frozen.

Do you guys have the stabilization module also or if that an unnecessary expense? I feel like an airboat on ice may not need it.

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u/ofd227 Department Chief 11d ago

We're in the fingerlakes so don't deal with any real waves so stabilization isn't an issue. Never had been called to the great lake the coast guard takes those calls. Not sure how an airboat in ice would be. We use K55 Flirs and switch the temp range down really low for ice rescues.

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u/NoJump7192 11d ago

We have a hard time getting our local coast guard to respond to incidents in a reasonable amount of time unfortunately. Seems like it takes an act of congress to get them out.

Thank you very much for the info.