Originally Posted by
Chu Chu
Presumably, the more rigidly the pinger is attached, the more likely it is to sustain damage -- or to damage the crash-protected part of the recorder itself. A detached pinger would still help locate the wreckage in general (not that they seem to have been too effective in open-ocean crashes recently . . .). So I guess there's a trade off.
No trade-off required.
It's perfectly possible for a pinger to be both securely attached, so that it won't separate from the recorder in an impact, and also readily removable once its job is done and the unit has been recovered (note the 4 Allen screws):
The pinger is, of course, externally mounted so that its batteries can be changed without having to open up the recorder itself.