Pole Hill
I can assure you that almost all airliners have box 2 tuned to 121.5 these days for security reasons so you would be broardcasting to a lot of aircraft of course the LAST fix should be transmited as you are about to hit the water the first one should be made as soon as you know you have a problem.
I like most pepole with a panel mounted GPS can also fix a radial and distance from a nav aid/airport so if I was near and in a position to start a search then I would, it is very important to get the search started quickly and vital if the victims are not in a liferaft. The psycological effect on the people in the water of an aircraft overhead cannot be overstated and the help in visual identification of the victims to a rescue helicopter is very usefull to aid a fast pickup.
I have twice been in a position to relay for a seach and resuce aircraft operating at low level, once for a helicopter in the channel working London info and that was hard work due to the large amount of other radio traffic and due to this traffic a switch to 121.5 was imminent when the seach was called off.
The other time was for a Nimrod over the north atlantic south of Ireland in both cases the search aircraft was out of VHF range of controling units. I have no doubt that both the helicopter and the Nimrod could have used the HF to contact controling units but I think they prefered the relay option to cut down on crew workload.
Last edited by A and C; 17th Jul 2005 at 11:48.