You know that bloke Murphy and his Law – seemingly he strikes when you least expect it and when he does the proverbial can often “hit the fan” so to speak…
A couple of recent threads on EO had me thinking about redundancy in terms of having a back-up.
When travelling remotely I’ve always considered what items associated with the running of the vehicle or in the “kit” in the back that need to have some sort of back-up in case of failure. In many cases it is easily achieved for little cost outlay, other items require some more thought around the risk, benefit / cost analysis…
And remembering remote doesn’t mean a thousand
miles from no-where, it could be within 100-kilometres from one of our major cities
For example, it might be a communications back-up, a Sat-phone is good, but what about a back-up in case that fails you, so maybe a
HF Radio. And yes, this is getting into the high end cost range, but highlight the ability to communicate in an emergency is paramount, you may not want to rely on one form only. I use this as an example…
It might be an additional fuel filter in the vehicle’s fuel system, or a box of matches as back-up to your Bic-Lighter – the potential list is endless.
One that prompted me was a discussion on mounting a spare wheel or the roof rack of a vehicle. I use a ratchet strap designed for the job and it works adequately, other suggestions included a J-Bolt arrangement. The chances of either failing would be slim, but having both is an example of building redundancy. Now it could be overkill for sure, but it gives an alternate mount in case one fails or breaks and is achieved for a cost of less than thirty-bucks!
And for sure, there will be those who might take a view that you can’t bullet proof everything, I get that (just to save you posting to tell me that) – but what are some of the things you consider would benefit from a back-up by having some failure redundancy built into it, and how have you achieved this?
Noting, I’m not necessarily thinking of this as a spare item of the same kind, but an alternative to what you have currently that achieves the same outcome…
Cheers, Baz – The Landy