Aerco develops connector for marine survival location device

The Sea Marshall alerting units are said to be the world’s smallest, fully automatic range of maritime survivor locating devices and are worn on a daily basis by yachtsmen and other seafarers such as workers on oil rigs. The alerting unit fits neatly and easily into a lifejacket automatically transmitting an SOS distress signal on the 121.5 MHz International Search and Rescue homing frequency a few seconds after the wearer enters the water.

The connector required for the alerting unit beacon has to be extremely rugged and secure and needed to incorporate an LED to advise the wearer that it was fully operational. Engineers at Marine Rescue Technologies could not find a standard connector that met these requirements and so asked for input from the Aerco DESIGNSUPPORT team.

Engineers within the team identified a connector from Binder that closely fitted the requirement and worked closely with engineers at the German connector company to modify the S623 range of M23 screw locking connectors that are protected to IP67.

To allow the connector to be over moulded to an electro luminescent aerial a custom solution was proposed and a small batch was made for prototype and proving purposes and now the product is in full production.