What can't they make EPIRB's mandatory?
Sometimes, when you know about the innovations that are being spearheaded in normal societies to enhance the quality and safety of lives, you wonder what our system managers are really doing.
We are not imploring them to set up a R&D (research and development) unit in Abuja, all we asking them is to learn (like Japan did after 1945) from what other countries are doing and borrow a "good" leaf when they see one. That cant be so difficult, can it? How about some requisite imagination and lateral thinking for once?
The USA has been developing a new surveilance and detection system called synthetic aperture radar or SAR.
This radar system is designed to be able to peer through trees, clouds and other obstructions to find lost planes and hopefully save lives.( They have been silient with regards to it's completion for a while, so I guess it's the military that are currently using it). This has been functionally tested in 2002.
It is meant to complement a global satellite system that listens for electronic emergency beacons sent by wrecked planes or people in distress. In remote areas, the beacons guide search and rescue personnel directly to the crash site. The system we have been relying to find the missing Wings aviation B1900 5N-JAH called Cospas-Sarsat, is all but useless if the emergency locator beacon (ELT) on board the airplane is unserviceable, destroyed on impact or fails to activate.
"Several states, including Alaska, California and Montana are interested in this radar," said David Affens, head of NASA’s Search and Rescue Mission Office at Goddard Space Flight Center, which is developing the radar. "We’ve even been called into some real searches for aircraft, though long after they’ve crashed, since the process now is very slow."
Hope we'll learn from our experience and that of others.
Sadly, it may be slow and too late for some.
Last edited by DRPAM007; 14th Jun 2009 at 16:03.