PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Search for distress signal is 'plane sailing' for Ofcom engineer
Old 20th Jan 2019, 16:23
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Pilot DAR
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
Age: 63
Posts: 5,609
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The passage speaks for itself. For a 406 ELT/PLB to be located, more satellite passes are required to improve location precision. The first pass tells SAR that it's been activated, subsequent passes improve the location precision. They can dispatch, and refine the search area enroute. Normally, an SAR dispatch will be combined with some phone calls to determine if it's a false alarm, with the beacon location being a factor. If the reported location is apparently an airport for a landplane, It's worth some phoning around to see if the beacon was set off by a rough landing, or switch bumping in a parked airplane. If the apparent location is away from an airport, and the airplane is known to be flying, it's moe worth consideration as a possible crash.

The systems works. For a time, a Norwegian based Cessna 182 amphibian was still registered to me in Canada, as a Canadian airplane. One early Saturday morning, I got the phone call that my 406 ELT was activated - in Norway. Yes, I told SAR, that's where the plane is. They asked me where it was based, and courtesy of a quick glance on Google Earth, I provided the lat long for both of the two lakes at which it normally resided. Yes, the more northerly lake was to location of the beacon. However, it's a remote lake, so no one had any way of knowing if it was an errant activation in a safely parked airplane, or the owner had actually crashed at the lake. Norwegian SAR was tasked to the lake. During that time, I made a few frantic phone calls to Norway, and was able to confirm that it had been an errant activation in a safely parked airplane (visiting kid flicking cockpit switches unseen). Within 45 minutes of the first phone call to me, all was resolved and SAR stood down. If I had not stood them down (had not been able to contact the owner), they would have flown up to his lake, and presumably seen the plane safely parked on its stand on shore. I was happily reassured that a system which we call upon rarely works when needed.
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