SAR people may largely be volunteers, but helicopters have fairly expensive operational costs. In time-sensitive situations, it is better to have two way communications (because it keeps SAR as inexpensive as possible). See my sister comment for my wife's experience.

Those two operations were made using snow mobiles, but yes, as soon as helicopters com into the picture, the costs skyrocket.

> because it keeps SAR as inexpensive as possible

"Hurry, but please hold the helicopter, I won't make enough money for the rest of my life to pay for it, whether I survive or not."

I was wondering who foots the bill for the equipment

In our case, our org (Norwegian Red Cross) buy the equipment using sponsor money and the like. Then we get reimbursed by the government for using them in SAR operations.

It works well enough for us to have maybe 4 snowmobiles, 2 6-wheel ATV's, a 4 person rope rescue kit, 10 TETRA phones and a car in addition to various medical equipment.

Totally.

It sounds like your team has the advantage of having a large volunteer corpus. I wish they all did.