Thank goodness the wristwatch PLB are BANNED!
Ever since introduction, the wristwatch PLB have been a scourge on the North Sea. False activations are an almost daily occurance, I am sure that when the SAR authorities pick up a signal from a satellite with a position fix in the N Sea, they just have another cup of tea certain in the knowlege its another false alarm.
skydriller, I can understand why you feel the way you do, but if you understood the issues you would feel differently.
The wristwatch beacons are, not surprisingly, fairly weak in their output, whilst the "proper" beacons carried on the aircraft are much bigger and more powerful.
On a typical N Sea aircraft there is an ADELT that automatically deploys on impact or water landing, floats around transmitting on 3 frequencies, the civil search frequency (that helicopters/ships would typically use to locate) the military search frequency (ditto for military helicopters/ships) and the satellite based SARSAT system that will give a near-instant worldwide alert that the aircraft has gone down (it includes a code indicating which aircraft has gone down)
Then there are the crew beacons - each pilot has a beacon in his lifejacket - in BHL these work on the civil and military homing frequencies. Then there are the liferaft beacons (2 liferafts so 2 beacons). Some aircraft have another automatically activated beacon built in to the aircraft. So altogether 5 or 6 "proper" beacons, 3 or 4 of which transmit on the satellite frequency.
Being proper beacons, they know that the satellite system can't cope with too many different transmissions from the same location. Its a bit like everyone transmitting on their walky-talkies at the same time - all you can hear is screeching. So they are clever - if they "hear" another beacon in the vicinity, they shut up.
Unfortunately the wristwatch beacons are not clever - they just scream out all the time. So even though the wristwatch beacons have pretty low output when the "proper" beacons are close by, they get a strong signal from the nearby wristwatches and "shut up".
The consequence is that the wristwatches supress the output from the proper beacons, whilst actually being very weak. So those nice people in the SAR helicopters and ships might get a very rough position (within a few miles) from the satellite system, but are unable to pick up the local signal, so unable to home in. A few miles is an awful lot of sea to look for a tiny dinghy, or an even more tiny head bobbing about in the water at night.
As far as I am aware, this was a significant factor in the long rescue time for REDU passengers, hence the banning.
The only shame is that it took an accident for the profile to be raised - the helicopter operators had wanted to ban them for a long time, but the oil companies, who pay our wages, refused. At least no one died making the point.
So skydriller, now that you know that your wristwatch will prevent you being rescued, do you still want to wear it in the chopper?
HC
ps took so long to draft that lot that Special beat me to it!