Scout enhances Project Lifesaver

When the Crestview Fire Department and Okaloosa EMS introduced Project Lifesaver last year, the system was lauded by the medical and emergency services communities.

A local Boy Scout has made the system used to track missing Alzheimer’s patients even better.

For his Eagle Scout service project, Chayne Sparagowski, 17, a Life Scout with Troop 773, designed a new antenna. In addition to costing a fraction of the price of the antenna that comes with the Project Lifesaver system, it is also more than twice as effective.

Project Lifesaver participants wear a transponder bracelet that emits a radio signal. CFD or Okaloosa EMS personnel, using a hand-held antenna, can track a patient who wanders away from home.  

 The range of the current Yagi Beam Antenna is about a mile, Sparagowski said.

The range of the four antennas built by fellow scouts under his supervision last Friday will be at least two to three miles.

The deficiency of the current antenna was brought to his attention by Cal Zethmayr of WAAZ-WJSB radio, a fellow member of North Okaloosa Amateur Radio Club.

Chayne discussed its limitations with Tony Holland, a Crestview Fire Department battalion chief, who, with Zethmayr, is a sponsor of Chayne’s Eagle project.

“After talking with Tony, I learned they were not too happy about it, but didn’t know of any solution,” Chayne said. “He was unsure at first when I told him a better antenna could be built using PVC pipe and old measuring tape.”

Using EZNEC, an antenna design program, Chayne created a four-element (arm) antenna about 2-feet by 3-feet tall.

“It’s weird looking. You wouldn’t think that PVC and measuring tape would do anything,” he said.

The total cost of the four antennas is less than $80.  Old tape measures were donated by the Crestview High School Construction Sciences Institute.

Before the scouts began construction, Chayne built and tested a prototype.

“I was at the courthouse and I made Cal walk about a mile-and-a-half away. He had the transmitter bracelet with him and I had the transceiver and the antenna,” Chayne described.

“The original antenna picked up to about Desi’s, and that was about it,” Chayne said. “The new antenna was a little over double that. Cal got to Martin Luther King Avenue, where I had him stop because it was hot out.”

To get his Eagle Scout designation, Chayne must complete his project and have conference with Troop 773 Scoutmaster Kelly Carico before his 18th birthday.

“That’s coming up tomorrow, so it was kinda pushing it,” Chayne said with a sheepish grin.

The next step will be to bring his project report and scout record before the Boy Scout Board of Review.

If they approve his progress since he first joined scouting, the Eagle Scout ceremony and the awarding of his badge won’t be far behind.

“It’s something he has worked hard toward,” said his mother, Nancy Sparagowski. “Making Eagle Scout is difficult and few boys make it.  The project itself is awesome.”