McMurdo says it also tested pre-upgraded products that were the subject of the original trials and that Peter Forey and the McMurdo team "observed significantly superior product performance compared to that reported by Equipped to Survive".

"All the updated beacons performed faultlessly, acquiring and transmitting an accurate GPS location within a few minutes, even under adverse conditions, " said Peter Forey, managing director of Sartech Engineering. Forey is an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of 406 MHz beacons and acted as an independent witness at all the tests.

Also present at the land tests in California was a representative from West Marine, the US boating and leisure retailer, who supported the original Equipped to Survive tests. "Under severe forest canopy and canyon obscuration, the improved beacons worked reliably in the trials. The performance of the upgraded FastFind Plus products improved dramatically. The tests highlighted the difficulty in testing GPS based products in a forest environment due to the periodic variability in satellite coverage, " said Chuck Hawley, vice president of Product Development at West Marine.

"We have proven beyond any doubt the reliability of the industry-standard 406 MHz COSPAS-SARSAT distress system and the benefits of integral GPS functionality. Peter Forey and our technical team are in the process of finalising the complete analysis of the data from the recent tests. We will be making a full test report, verified by Mr Forey, available later this month, " said Gary Mullins, managing director of McMurdo.

The response from Equipped To Survive Foundation executive director Doug Ritter.

On the foundation's website - www.equipped.com - Ritter says: "? we are gratified that McMurdo has taken steps to improve the performance of its beacons, we look forward to analyzing McMurdo's detailed test results, should they choose to provide them to us as we did ours to them, and in conducting our own tests of the upgraded beacons to confirm McMurdo's representations, including testing of off-the-shelf beacons that consumers would actually be using in an emergency.

Commenting on the results announced in the press release, Ritter said: "it is impossible to make any sort of evaluation as to the quality of the testing that McMurdo conducted without reviewing a detailed report, such as the one published by the Foundation. We have only the cursory details from the press release. Regardless, I do think it is somewhat of a reach for McMurdo to claim that their tests, conducted by the company on its own behalf, are 'independent, ' no matter the credibility and experience of those who witnessed the tests.

Moreover, the upgraded beacons tested were not offthe-shelf units."

For more information on this saga, go to www.mcmurdo.co.uk and www.equipped.com